"I went back and looked at our 2022 and 2021 tax returns through TurboTax and the 2022 returns do have the sums for the recharacterization. The 2021 tax returns don't appear to have anything related to these events in them."
I'm not sure what you mean about the 2022 tax returns having the sums for the recharacterization. There should be nothing on a filed 2022 tax return regarding any of this. The only thing that should be present is if either of you were covered by a workplace retirement plan, the resulting traditional IRA contributions for 2021 would have been nondeductible, two Forms 8606 showing nondeductible contributions should have been included with your 2021 tax return and the IRA Information Worksheet in your 2021, 2022 and 2023 TurboTax tax files should show this basis in nondeductible traditional IRA contributions.
1) If not already present on your 2021 tax return, you need to amend 2021 to show the resulting traditional IRA contributions either on Schedule 1 line 20 if deductible or on Forms 8606 if nondeductible. Also, if the 2021 tax return included any Forms 5329 showing a penalty for an excess Roth IRA contribution, that needs to be corrected as well.
2) Correct.
3) Incorrect. The recharacterization causes the contribution to be treated and required to be reported as a traditional IRA contribution on the 2021 tax return as if the contribution had originally been made as a traditional IRA contribution.
4) Nondeductible contributions required to be present on line 14 of the 2021 Forms 8606 carry forward to line 2 of the respective 2024 Forms 8606. Since apparently no 2021 Forms 8606 were originally filed, your 2024 tax file will probably not already show this basis and you'll have to add it manually when you prepare your 2024 tax return. Had nondeductible traditional IRA contributions been originally correctly reported on the 2021 tax return, this basis would already be carrying forward on TurboTax's IRA Information Worksheets through the years and automatically included on line 6 of the 2024 Forms 8606.
5) Addressed above.
