dmertz
Level 15

Retirement tax questions

Fidelity sending a single Form 1099-R was proper.  The instructions for Form 1099-R allow multiple distributions, or a single distribution sent to multiple destinations, from the same account reportable with the same code to be combined onto a single Form 1099-R.

 

 It's a TurboTax design choice that requires the Form 1099-R to be split.  Although the user interface could be designed to be able to accommodate all of the possible ways that the amounts could be split, that user interface overly complex for most users.  It's a tradeoff between accommodating the split to different destinations, overburdening the majority of users who do partial rollovers or conversions and having to provide different algorithms for direct rollovers, indirect rollovers, employer plans and IRAs.  If TurboTax was to be modified to be able to accommodate this scenario with the entry of a single Form 1099-R, in addition to asking how much of the distribution was directly rolled over to each type of destination account, TurboTax would have to ask how much of the after-tax basis to allocate to each type of destination account.  There are numerous areas in TurboTax where TurboTax requires splitting of forms to accommodate their entry.