CALSTRS Annuity?

[DanaJW]

I manually entered information from my CALSTRS 1099R.  For the first time, TurboTax says “we found a few other questions about your situation.”  I have not previously experienced this.  The following questions are about the annuity yet CALSTRS pension is not really an annuity.  (Maybe this is a matter of semantics.). I did speak with a CALSTRS representative yesterday, and he said he has not encountered this.

I get to a page that has the following questions:

Annuity start date (if this is referring to my CALSTRS pension, I know this answer).

Plan cost (not sure  where I get this information or exactly what it means).

Number of months payments were received in 2025 (I know this answer)

Tax-free amount previously recovered (not sure how to answer or interpret this)

thank you in advance for your help

[ReneV4]

TurboTax will often ask these questions when Box 2a if blank, to determine if any of your pension is tax-free.

For the annuity questions, you already have the answer for several, so let's walk through each:

1. Annuity start date is when you received your first pension payment from CALSTRS
2. Plan cost is the total amount of after-tax contributions you made to CALSTRS during your teaching career
3. Note: If you have been receiving the pension for years and never claimed a tax-free portion, then your plan cost is possibly zero (0)
4. If you did not make any additional after-tax contributions (common), then you can input a zero (0)
5. Tax-free amount previously recovered is asking for the total of all tax-free portions of your pension that you have excluded from your income in previous years' returns
6. Note: If you have not been tracking your tax-free portion, you can input zero (0)

Therefore, if you have no after tax contributions, you can input zero (0) for the plan cost and tax-free amount previously required questions.