Excess contributions to Roth, converting funds to traditional, and moving to self-directed traditional IRA
Hi all,
I recently realized that I have over-contributed to my roth IRA since 2017, as I have been over the income limits. I have a traditional IRA as well set up with the same brokerage. I am trying to determine what the best course of action is to remove the excess contributions to the roth ira and move over as much of the funds to my traditional ira. I am also in the process of setting up a self-directed traditional IRA, and would like to move as much of the funds from my current brokerage’s traditional IRA to the new self-directed traditional IRA. Any advice / recommendations would be much appreciated! Thanks
Permalink Submitted by Alan - IRA critic on Wed, 2021-05-12 16:00
The 2017-2019 excess contributions have incurred cumulative excise taxes of 6% on each year’s excess contributions plus the carryover of prior excess contributions. These cannot be returned with earnings or recharacterized because the deadline has passed. A distribution of the total excess (without earnings) should be done before the end of this year to prevent another year of excise taxes. The distribution should be non taxable since they are a return of regular Roth contributions.
The 2020 and 2021 excess contributions (if any) can still be recharacterized as TIRA contributions which would likely be non deductible, or withdrawn with earnings. This prevents an excise tax for those contributions, although an excise tax will still be due for 2020 on the 2017-2019 excess contributions. Any earnings on withdrawn 2020 contributions that you made in 2020 will be taxable on your 2020 return. You will need a 5329 for 2021 even if you have corrected the excess contributions this year to show that you no longer have an accumulated excess amount in your Roth IRA.
Since contributions for 2020 made early in the year may have very large gains, if you are invested in stock based investments, you might save money by paying the excise tax for the 2020 contribution as well and NOT withdrawing with earnings because the excise tax could be less than the tax and penalty for withdrawn earnings, and the earnings would remain in the Roth.
Always start with the oldest excess when completing the 5329 because these forms are cumulative, but when you get to the 2020 excess, you have the above choice to make, but you will have to figure what your gain is from the date of your 2020 contribution to the present. I would get the excess contributions taken care before transferring to a new IRA custodian since the new custodian will not be able to process the removal of 2020 or 2021 excess contributions with earnings, since they do not have the data.
Any decent tax program should have alerted you to these excess contributions if you entered the contributions, and any professional preparer should also have asked about your Roth contributions. So something went wrong in the filing process for those years. Nonetheless, this should be corrected because there is no statute of limitations for excess contributions and excise taxes.