Inherited IRA

Submitted by karin Tyson on Fri, 2017-11-03 22:28

My client age Lydia is 58 year old and we transferred her mother’s IRA into her inherited IRA April 2017. Her 85 year old mother passed away October of 2016. We do not know what the balance was as of 12/31/16 because she did not have a current statement. So how do we calculate the RMD to be taken out by 12/31/17 for Lydia.



Submitted by Alan - IRA critic on Sat, 2017-11-04 03:59

  • You will need to find out the 12/31/2016 balance for the IRA. Lydia can call the IRA custodian and ask them if she cannot locate a Form 5498 or other statement of the year end balance that the custodian was required to mail. A statement of the value was probably mailed to mother’s address in January of 2017, but after the inherited IRA was documented by the death certificate in April, 2017 another mailing may have been sent to Lydia. 
  • Note that Lydia is also responsible to determine if her mother completed the 2016 RMD before passing, and if she did not, Lydia also needs to withdraw the year of death RMD. 

Submitted by Ben Meyer on Sat, 2017-11-04 18:51

If you are unable to obtain the year end statement or form 5498 from the IRA custodian, you can request a Wage and Income Transcript from the IRS for tax year 2016.  The transcript will show data on all information statements including all forms 5498.  The data for 2016 should be available by now.  As a person with a material interest the IRS should honor a request that you submit.  See form 8506-T and instructions, with a request on line 8.  You will also probably need to submit a statement explaining your interest in the matter, and copies of any probate documents that may be available showing your authority.

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