(You won’t get penalized for overpaying your taxes. The IRS could conceivably correct your return and refund the small taxes due, but they have not been doing that with any consistency, if ever. Therefore, you could just forget your basis if you wanted to. One thing you cannot do is to decide to not file the 8606 for awhile and then try to recover the basis you never claimed later on. The basis you could have claimed for closed years is lost, and you would have to amend the open years to get the refunds.)

The above is answer from previous question. I don’t understand the definitions of “the basis you never claimed”, “open” and “closed” years.

But here’s my situation:

It appears I did not file the 8606 for 2011 when I did a small Roth conversion which would have reduced my 2011 basis by about $70. (I don’t want to file an amended return.) Does that mean I cannot file the 8606 ever again and claim any of the remaining basis, or does it just mean I cannot claim that lost $70 for 2011? In other words, can I just forget about omitting the 2011 8606 and start filing them again in 2012 and continue going forward. If this is the case, then I suppose I should just reduce the 2012 basis by the “lost” $70 for 2011…? (That seems needlessly complicated. I can’t imagine why the IRS would not just allow you to start up the 8606 filing again after missing a year in which you took a distribution so small as to make the tax savings of the 8606 filing meaningless…)

thanks…!