I have a 2007 nondeductible traditional IRA contribution of $5K. Can that be converted to a deductible contribution in a later year.

[jcaldie]

I received a letter from the IRS disallowing my 2015 IRA deduction. I had a 2007 nondeductible traditional IRA contribution of $5000; form 8606 generated. In 2015 Turbo Tax said I could convert $4370 of the $5000 to a traditional IRA contribution and it created a new 8606 for the difference of $730. I've re-ran TurboTax 2015 thinking I did something wrong but found no mistake. IRS says I can't convert. Who is wrong?

[dmertz · Accepted solution]

No, it cannot be turned into a deductible contribution for a later year.

I suspect that your mistake was that you told TurboTax that you had an excess contribution.  However, you had no excess contribution, only a nondeductible contribution.  Examine line 4 of 2015 TurboTax's IRA Information Worksheet to see if you made this erroneous entry.

[jcaldie]

I did make the mistake of entering $5000 as an excess contribution which caused the error but I also went in and fixed it to say $0. Turbo tax still created the IRA contribution. Because the excess contribution was the same dollar amount as the non deductible previous year contribution, it appeared as if Turbo Tax was allowing the conversion (wrong!).  I had to go to the IRA worksheet and manually clear the excess contribution to actually clear the $5000 since reentering as $0 didn't clear it. Hopefully the same method works when doing an amended return

[dmertz]

Yes, you must also clear what would now have been a flagged entry on line 7 of the IRA Contributions Worksheet.  The amount on line 7 is not permitted to exceed the amount on line 4 of the IRA Information Worksheet.  Smart Check would have caught this.

Had you never entered the erroneous excess contribution amount in the first place, you never would have ended up being able to put an amount on line 7 of the IRA Contributions Worksheet.