Excess CARES Act Rollover Amount

I have a client that was taking monthly IRA RMDs in early 2020 from one custodian’s IRA, I’ll call that custodian A. Once the CARES act was passed we identified that it made sense to return all 2020 withdrawals by the 8/31 deadline and take advantage of the eligible CARES Act rollover provisions. The client assured me that $X was taken from custodian A and they wanted to deposit that amount to custodian B. It now appears that the client miscalculated the amount taken from custodian A and there was an excess deposited to custodian B. This is reflected on the 1099r from custodian A and the 5498 from custodian B. Would it be correct to process the removal of excess roller contribution? I assume any attributable earnings will be taxable in 2021?



Unfortunately, the entire amount of the rollover is an excess contribution because would be RMDs can only be returned to the distributing IRA account, which was with Custodian A. Custodian B should have realized that this was a disallowed rollover, but perhaps was not told of the source of the distribution. Client must request that the entire amount rolled to Cust B be treated as an excess IRA contribution and removed with allocated earnings. Since the excess was made in 2020, the taxable earnings will also be taxable in 2020. Worst part is that the entire 1099R amount must be reported as taxable. Following is a copy of the applicable provision from Notice 2020-51:
“D. Permitted repayments of RMDs previously distributed from an IRA. In the case of an IRA owner or beneficiary who has already received a distribution of an amount that would have been an RMD in 2020 but for section 2203 of the CARES Act or section 114 of the SECURE Act, the recipient may repay the distribution to the distributing IRA, even if the repayment is made more than 60 days after the distribution, provided the repayment is made no later than August 31, 2020. The repayment will be treated as a rollover for purposes of § 408(d)(3) of the Code, but will not be treated as a rollover for purposes of the one rollover per 12-month period limitation in § 408(d)(3)(B) and the restriction on rollovers for nonspousal beneficiaries in § 408(d)(3)(C). ”

If the timing was such that one of these distributions can be treated as an ordinary rollover subject to the one-rollover-per-12-months limitation, that one distribution rolled over would not be part of the excess contribution and probably should not be treated as a contribution that is eligible to be returned.  Also, if the client had income that would support a new IRA contribution, some portion of these contributions to the IRA at custodian B could be treated as a regular contribution for 2020 instead of part of the excess contribution.

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