Retirement tax questions

You can recharacterize your Roth contribution as a traditional IRA contribution until the due date, make it nondeductible, and then convert it. Please request the recharacterization with your financial institute by the due date. The contribution will be entered on your 2021 tax return but the conversion will be reported on your 2022 tax return since will happen in 2022.

But a backdoor Roth only works as intended if your traditional, SEP, SIMPLE IRAs are empty. When did you roll your traditional IRA to a 401k?

You will enter the recharacterization when you enter the contribution to the Roth IRA

1. Login to your TurboTax Account 
2. Click on "Search" on the top right and type “IRA contributions”
3. Click on “Jump to IRA contributions"
4. Select “Roth IRA”
5. Answer “No” to “Is This a Repayment of a Retirement Distribution
6. Enter the Roth contribution amount 
7. Answer “Yes” to the recharacterized question on the “Did You Change Your Mind?” screen and enter the contribution amount (no earnings or losses)
8. TurboTax will ask for an explanation statement where it should be stated that the original $xxx.xx plus $xxx.xx earnings (or loss) were recharacterized.
9. On the screen "Choose Not to Deduct IRA Contributions" answer "Yes" (if you are thinking about doing a backdoor Roth. If you have a retirement plan at work and are over the income limit it will be nondeductible automatically and you only get a screen saying $0 is deductible)

You will get Form 1099-R  for the recharacterization with code R-Recharacterized IRA contribution made for 2021 and this belongs on the 2021 return. But a 1099-R with code R will do nothing to your return. You can only report it as mentioned above. Therefore, you can ignore the 1099-R with code R when you get it in 2023. The box 1 on the 1099-R will report the total recharacterized amount (contribution plus earnings) but it does not separately report the earnings and box 2a must be zero.

Please see What happens if I made an excess Roth IRA contribution for additional information.