The Thrift Savings Plan (TSP) 1099-R, Distributions From Pensions, Annuities, Retirement or Profit-Sharing gets reported in the same section as your pension but it gets reported separately: https://ttlc.intuit.com/replies/4194737
I entered my TSP RMD as a separate 1099-R entry, but when I fill out my OPM annuity 1099-R entry it asks: Was this withdrawal an RMD? TurboTax indicates that the "No" response to this question is not common, but I clicked "No" since I had already entered my TSP RMD as coming from a qualifying retirement plan, i.e., federal retirement. Was this correct?
If you mark NO, the program will charge you for having not taken the required distributions.You want to mark yes to the RMD box meaning that you took the minimum necessary for that retirement account, regardless of which account it came from.
For example:
Say you have 4 retirement accounts, all have a minimum distribution required. You can take all 4 minimums from one account. You just have to withdraw that total minimum amount from your retirement supply.
The point is that there is no RMD associated with a federal civil service pension. So why the question about an RMD? There's a question later on about whether you get regular payments from this pension. Of course you do, because that's the way the pension works. With the large number of federal retirees filing tax returns, one would expect the entry of the CSA1099R to be a very simple task on TurboTax. It's very confusing to get asked to come up with numbers to fill in something from years back, when you can't imagine why any more information is needed. I believe that is what happens when you answer that you receive regular payments. I just changed my selection to "No, I don't get regular payments." Maybe it has something to do with the two different ways to compute the taxable amount. Could someone address this.
By law, the distributions from the federal civil service pension, like any qualified pension, are required distributions, calculated to meet the required minimums, so they meet the legal definition of an RMD. Since none of the information in the numbered boxes of Form 1099-R identifies the distribution as being from a pension, TurboTax always asks the RMD questions for someone age 70½ or over (age 72 beginning with the 2020 tax year). These are RMDs even though they are not typically referred to as such outside of determining whether or not the distributions are eligible for rollover, and determining whether or not the distributions are eligible for rollover is the reason that TurboTax asks the RMD questions. TurboTax blocks reporting as rolled over any amount that is not eligible for rollover because it is a required distribution.
No numbers from years back have anything to do with the RMD questions. The numbers from years back are only asked if you choose to use the Simplified Method to determine the taxable amount of a distribution when the taxable amount in box 2a of Form 1099-R is incorrect or undetermined, and only if you made after-tax contributions to the pension that have not yet been fully recovered such that a portion of the distribution is indeed nontaxable.