Entering IRA contribution

[Ravi Ammamuthu]

Hello There,

I contributed $8000 ( aged above 50) in the year 2025 to Traditional IRA and then immediately converted the same to Roth IRA. 

I did receive form 1099 R and I entered the info about this in the income section. I have question when I fill in the deduction section. 

1) In this scenario, do I need to enter anything for Traditional or Roth IRA in the deduction section
2) If I don't enter this for the Traditional IRA, then my taxes are becoming higher and hence this question.

Tell us about your IRAs
Here I check marked for Traditional IRA and not the Roth IRA

Enter the total amount of contributions you put into a traditional IRA for 2025, even if you later transferred some or all of it to a Roth IRA. Learn more

Total 2025 traditional IRA contributions , 

Here I entered $8000

Ravi's Traditional IRAs

Did you recharacterize any of the traditional IRA contributions for 2025 over to a Roth IRA contribution?
Here I said No

IF I do the above,  I get $14545 as return. If don't enter anything for the traditional IRA, then I get only $11,500 as return. So I am tryiing to get the max return but at the same time, I want to do the right thing.

3)What are all the sections or places I need to enter when I contributed to Traditional IRA, converted to Roth IRA and received 1099 R

Regards,

Ravi

[baldietax]

yes you need to enter the traditional IRA contribution.  think of the backdoor Roth as 2 separate transactions, a non-deductible contribution (in Deductions & Credits section) and then the IRA conversion (under Wages & Income) and they get linked together on Form 8606, but you need to be careful to answer all the questions in both sections.

Then check the outcome on Form 8606 and you should be seeing $0 on Line 4b of your 1040 assuming no other taxable distributions (assuming the conversion exactly matched the contribution, sometimes there is a delay in the conversion and little bit of earnings get taxed).

Here are the instructions from Turbotax on this:

https://ttlc.intuit.com/turbotax-support/en-us/help-article/retirement-benefits/enter-backdoor-roth-...

[Ravi Ammamuthu]

Thank you. 

May I know why entering the non taxable contribution ( Contribution to IRA, my wages are higher that allowed for this deduction) would reduce the tax? As I explained in my original post, if I don't enter this non taxable IRA contribution, then the tax I owe is higher. Please help me to understand this

Regards,

Ravi

[baldietax]

If you don't have a non-deductible contribution then you don't have any basis in the IRA (assuming no prior basis in the IRA carried over), so the Roth conversion is assumed to come from pre-tax IRA money and will be 100% taxed.  With the contribution on Form 8606, the conversion comes from after-tax money and will be determined to be 100% tax-free.

Suggest going thru Form 8606 to confirm, you'll see how the contribution and conversion are connected on that form and the calculation of how much of the conversion is taxable.