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I recently rolled over my employee 401k to an IRA at a different financial institution. In that 401k, I had made both taxable and nontaxable contributions. Since retiring, I’ve been receiving required minimum distributions, and the 1099R always shows part of the distribution is nontaxable.

It is my understanding that the new financial institution is not responsible for tracking which part of my future distributions will be taxable and which will be nontaxable and that I must do this myself.

My problem is that the original financial institution will not tell me the amount of my employee contributions. They have that information or they wouldn’t be able to prepare the 1099R’s. The customer service people will not help. They think that the new institution will track it. I do not know much tax law, but I’m concerned that I need to get this fixed asap. The entire 401K went into an IRA over a month ago.

What should I do to make this major financial institution give me the information I need and how do I track the information to report to the IRS?

Thanks so much for any information you can provide! I’m worried sick.

Chris W. Rea
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Kalliekaykat
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1 Answers1

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Absent cooperation from your 401k plan, you'll need to go back to your contributions and calculate how much after tax contributions you've made. It should be reported on your payslips and 401k statements. From that you'll need to deduct the nontaxable distributions. What's left would be your remaining basis in your IRA which you'd then need to track, prorating your distributions.

This is a good example why after tax contributions without an immediate Roth conversion are a very very bad idea.

littleadv
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