RMD’s for 2017 Not Taken in Time
My mother passed away in April 2017 at the age of 87. She had a Beneficiary IRA from her brother, which named my sister and me as her beneficiaries. We notified the custodian at the time of her death, but with all the probate issues, we did not follow up and transfer the IRA funds to our names, since these did not have to be involved in probate. We are both not even close to retirement age and did not realize that we had to take her RMD for 2017 until the notice came. We rushed to set up accounts but ran out of time at the end of the year and just missed the 12/31 deadline. The custodian is cutting the checks and sending us each our share of the RMD, less 15% we requested they take in tax withholding. Should we each file the 5329 form for 2017 now requesting the waiver for RC or wait to file it with our 2017 income taxes.
We were contacted in December by the custodian of another IRA that she had. I told him that she had passed and that I notified him in May 2017, he said he failed to make note of it in his records and that he didn’t have time to get accounts transferred in late December. I have yet to hear back from him, so I guess we are in the same situation with this IRA RMD too. Do we each file separate 5329 forms for this RMD, when we receive the information on how much it is?
Any advice would be helpful. Sally
Permalink Submitted by Alan - IRA critic on Tue, 2018-01-16 23:24
You should each file the 5329 with your 2017 return. Proper completion will likely produce an approved waiver. Now you need to establish separate inherited IRA accounts by the end of this year for the IRA she owned and then your own life expectancies would apply to beneficiary RMDs starting this year. The already inherited IRA RMDs will continue to be based on the divisor your mother would have used, not your own ages. You can separate that one into two inherited IRAs as well but that will not change the RMDs. Do not combine into a single inherited IRA because the RMD divisors are different. You can probably use the same explanation on the 5329 for being late, so you each can file just one 5329 for 2017.