@DaveF1006 before advising people not to use a substitute 1099-R, you really need to check what state they are in, because some states offer preferential tax treatment for pensions (even foreign ones), that people won't get if they don't classify the income as a pension on the federal return. If you search this forum, you'll find posts where people in states like New Jersey ran into that issue. They couldn't report pension income as "other" income without suffering a material increase in their state income tax, because the income had to be on line 5b of the federal return in order to flow to the correct place in the state return. A quick Google suggests that states with special treatment for pension/retirement income include Georgia, Delaware, Illinois, Iowa, Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Michigan, New Jersey, South Carolina, Virginia, Wisconsin and Utah, so I'd be very cautious about suggesting that anyone from those states enter a pension as "other reportable income". The substitute 1099-R seems to be the only approach that ensures the correct tax treatment.
