Checkwriting from inherited IRA for QCDs

Submitted by James Finamore on Mon, 2023-06-05 14:15

I am having difficulty finding a custodian for my inherited IRA who will allow check writing privileges. I want to be able to make Qualified Charitable Distributions using checks rather than the cumbersome process used by most IRA custodians. TD Ameritrade, the previous custodian of my account offered checkwriting privileges. But Charles Schwab, which bought out TD, does not.

Does anyone know of an IRA custodian that allows checkwriting for beneficiary or inherited IRAs?



Submitted by Alan - IRA critic on Mon, 2023-06-05 16:08

Do not know. Can’t you make sufficient QCDs from your owned IRA or are you between 70.5 and 73? Schwab encourages checkwriting for owned IRA QCDs.



Submitted by James Finamore on Mon, 2023-06-05 18:27

I do not have an IRA of my own.  If I did, Schwab would gladly allow checkwriting on that.  Which is why I find their position on beneficiary IRAs so baffeling.   Regarding the age question, I am 74 years old.



Submitted by Alan - IRA critic on Mon, 2023-06-05 18:38

  • Seems odd that if TDA provided it, that Schwab would not honor those checks as part of the TDA integration process. Did they notify you that your checks are now void?  
  • While there has likely been a lack of demand for inherited IRA checkwriting, there seems to be considerable interest in making QCDs from an inherited IRA, and Schwab probably will issue such checks upon request. And offering checkwriting would not appear to require much of a change to support systems. DId you check with Fidelity and Vanguard?


Submitted by James Finamore on Mon, 2023-06-05 20:48

I didn’t get an explicit notification that my TDA checks are void.  What I did get initially from Schwab was that checks would be mailed to me.  When the checks didn’t arrive I called Schwab and was informed that I had been misinformed the first time, and that Schwab does NOT allow checking for beneficiary IRAs.  You raise a good question though as to whether the TD checks I have now would be honored.  But because the Schwab folks were so adamant about NOT allowing checking for inherited IRAs, I doubt if they would send me some of their checks when I run out of TD checks. Maybe I should give that a try…?   Vanguard and Fidelity were both equally adamant that they do not allow checking from inherited IRA accounts. 



Submitted by William Tuttle on Tue, 2023-06-06 02:23

  • IRA custodians are increasingly not allowing check writing from inherited IRAs for very good reasons.
  • Distributions from inherited IRAs are never eligible for Rollover and there are RMD and QCD timing requirements.
  • Check writing makes it all too easy to take distributions, do 60-day rollovers, Roth conversions, etc… None of which are allowed.
  • QCDs must taken first for the QCD to entirety replace the RMD.
  • These are both non-trivial sources of customer support headaches and unhappy customers. Even though these are uninformed unforced errors by the account owners themselves.
  • Not to mention, while direct QCDs by the IRA custodian are reflected on the current year 1099-R on the issue date. Checks written by the IRA account owner would be reflected on the 1099-R year the check was debited.


Submitted by James Finamore on Tue, 2023-06-06 14:45

I don’t know what a 60 day rollover is and have no idea how to write checks to fund a Roth account since I have no earned income.  What I do know is that the 1099-R sent to me annually by TD Ameritrade showed only the TOTAL amount of all the distributions.  It was then up to me to document which of these were QCDs.  I was able to do that by using the thank you letters I received from the various charities.



Submitted by Jay Wiedwald on Tue, 2023-06-06 21:41

The beauty of being able to use checks to make QCD’s out of an IRA is that it makes tracking extremely straightforward – especially if you take care to ONLY use the checks for QCD’s.  Since the 1099-R send by the IRA custodian doesn’t identify the QCD portion and it’s up to the taxpayer to keep track when filing their return, being able to easily separate out the QCD’s makes life a lot easier.



Submitted by James Finamore on Tue, 2023-06-06 15:06

It’s certainly apparent to me  that many IRA custodians don’t allow checkwriting from inherited IRAs.  My original reason for posting this query is to ask if aanyone knows of a custodian that DOES allow it.  



Add new comment

Log in or register to post comments