Help! Inherited IRA just discovered after 18 years!

Help! In the last 2 months my siblings and I were contacted by Fidelity Investments and notified that my mother had an IRA account that we were named as the beneficiaries of. Here is the catch, my mother died in 1998… at the age of 41.
I am attempting to see what I can do about this situation but there are several factors that I just do not know about.
First of all we have obviously have been missing the required minimum distributions for the last 18 years! I know I told to file a 5329 by the person handling the account at Fidelity but in some articles I have read it states to file one for each year I missed the minimum distribution, I was only 10 years old when my mother passed and I don’t believe I started filing my own taxes until I was 21.
When I asked my Father if he knew anything of the account he said he didn’t know and if he did he completely forgot. Its not a large amount in the IRA but that it not the point. Is there anything I can do to rectify the 18 years of missed RMD’s? Will there be anything left after all this time? Thank you in advance!



I will leave it to Alan to answer in detail. The good news is with this fact pattern, you will not have any trouble getting the IRS to accept your reasonable cause. The real question is, what took Fidelity so long? Also, clearly the IRS automatic detection programs for missed RMDs are non-existent.

  • Before 2002, the default rule for beneficiary RMDs when the owner passed prior to RBD was the 5 year rule. Therefore, there is no way to change over to life expectancy now. In the 2002 Regs there was an option to opt out of the 5 year rule providing that this was elected by 12/31/2003. Since this was not done the entire balance should have been distributed by 12/31/2003.
  • There is no specific template when the 5 year rule has been missed for several years, but as spiritrider pointed out, if you file Form 5329 and explain your age and that you were never notified regarding RMDs, the IRS will likely waive the penalty. You cannot file the 5329 until you take a full distribution. So now the question is how many 5329 forms are required. I would simplify things by determining what the account balance was on 12/31/2003 and file a 2003 5329 requesting a waiver of the penalty on that amount. Then file just one more 5329 for 2017 requesting a waiver for the difference between the full distribution you took and the prior 5329 for 2003. That way, you are improvising, but still addressing every dollar in the account, just not for every individual year. 
  • The lump sum distribution will be taxable in the year you take it out. At this point, if you really think taxation of the total in 2018 will be much lower than in 2017, you could take out the full amount in January. If about the same, I would get it over with now.

Thank you so much for this information! I’m really happy to have stumbled upon this site. I have been trying to find answers though a few differnt sources and the answers I recieved were always vague and muddled at best. I am unfortuantly not well versed in proper tax protacle but with your explanation I now understand what to do. Thank you again! 

Add new comment

Log in or register to post comments