Correct. You 2018 tax return should have included an explanation of the recharacterization, but it's probably too late to bother with providing that if your 2018 did not include that. It probably makes more sense just to have the explanation ready to provide if the IRS ever asks for it. The IRS will be able to see from the 2018 Form 5498 that there was a contribution and from the code JP 2019 Form 1099-R that there was a return of contribution, but the fact that there was an investment loss on the returned contribution means that they won't have sufficient information to determine precisely what amount of contribution was returned and that's where you explanation fills in the missing piece. Presumably it was a $5,500 contribution that was returned, so from the Form 1099-R the IRS would only be able to determine that some amount between $5,340.71 and $5,500 was returned, although they might suspect as I do that the amount of contribution returned was $5,500 with the amount distributed being $5,500 minus an investment loss of about 2.9%.
