Figure Roth IRA basis without 14 years of brokerage records?
If you have to fill out Form 8606 Part III, Line 22, and you simply don’t have records going back all the way to 1998, what do you do?!
And, this can on only get worse… Will you need 30 years worth of financial records when trying to do this in 2028? Yikes.
Thanks
Permalink Submitted by Alan Spross on Fri, 2012-04-06 03:11
Obviously, it is necessary to keep records of all contributions in order to report a Roth IRA distribution until the Roth is fully qualified. These contributions are not reported on your tax return, so just having your old returns will not help you.
Some sort of tally sheet works well, listing the regular and conversion contributions each year, and it there is a distribution, the remaining balance of those contributions. If you keep the Form 5498 issued by the Roth custodian each year, you will know your total contributions. If you have not changed your Roth custodian, the custodian can tell you from their records how much you have contributed to them, although you might have to pay a fee for their research.
If none of this is available, you can request copies of Form 5498 from the IRS.
Note that this problem ends once your Roth is qualified (5 years and age 59.5) since Roth distributions no longer must be reported on Form 8606 at that point.