NUA and after tax contributions
I have balances from both pre-tax and post-tax contributions in a company stock fund at a 401k plan from a former employer. I am planning to distribute these balances in anticipation of RMDs coming up in a couple of years and want to take advantage of NUA. Using simplified numbers to illustrate: the pre-tax balance is current at $125k, with original contributions of 25k; the post-tax balance is 30k, with original contributions of 6k.
If I take this distribution in company shares into my taxable brokerage account, my understanding is that I will pay ordinary income tax on the original pre-tax contributions (25k) and the growth in the post-tax piece (24k). The shares in the brokerage account will have a basis of 25k and 30k respectively and I need to hold on to them for a year after distribution to get LTCG treatment. Is that correct?
Permalink Submitted by Alan - IRA critic on Sat, 2024-05-18 16:46
Partially.
To qualify for NUA treatment, you must make a qualified lump sum distribution (LSD) of the entire balance of all similar plans held by the employer, so if you have an ESOP balance you must also distribute the ESOP. You can ignore any DB plans. There must also have been no “intervening distribution” between your last triggering event and the LSD year, so if your last triggering event was separation from service or reaching 59.5, you cannot have taken a partial distribution after that event and prior to 2024, your presumed LSD year.
Your plan may or may not offer you a choice of applying the after tax contribution (6k) to the rest of the 401k, from which you could do a direct rollover of that amount to a Roth IRA tax free, but that would increase your taxable cost basis in the shares to 31k. The other and more common plan procedure is that the 6k would be applied to the LSD and your taxable cost basis would be 25k, around 16% of the current total value. The LSD would result in 25k being added to your ordinary income for the distribution year. Your 1099R should show the taxable cost basis in Box 2a, the 6k in Box 5, and the amount of NUA in Box 6. The total distribution box should be checked.
Once the shares are in the brokerage account, your cost basis per share would be 31k/# of shares and your NUA per share would be their value per share at distribution less the cost basis. If you sold shares in the first year, the NUA would be taxable at the LTCG rate, but any increase in value after distribution would be taxable at the ordinary income rate. After 1 year has passed, all gains will be at the lower LTCG rate. If the shares lose value before you sell, the loss just reduces the amount of NUA per share.
Of course, you should verify that the distribution will qualify for NUA before making any distribution request, because if it does not it will be too late to do a 60 day rollover to your IRA to avoid a taxable distribution of all but 6k.
Another option if you want to wait until January of your first plan RMD year, tell the plan you wish to delay that first RMD until January of the following year and then do your LSD. The LSD would count toward both your first and second year RMDs and the amount of RMD remaining depends on what the rest of the 401k balance is.