How Long Do I Have to Keep Year-End Retirement Account Statements?

By Joe Cicchinelli, IRA Technical Expert

Follow Me on Twitter: @JoeCiccEdSlott

This week’s Slott Report Mailbag looks at how long you have to store year-end retirement account statements as well as how a spousal beneficiary should do if he or she decides to leave a deceased spouse’s IRA separate from their own. As always, we recommend you work with a competent, educated financial advisor to keep your retirement nest egg safe and secure. You can find one in your area here.

1.

This is the story: I put money into several IRA mutual funds over the years, sometimes rolling over from one to another. Over a span of about 40 years, I probably have owned about 30 different IRA mutual funds. Last year, tiring of all the statements/prospectuses/quarterly-semi-annual and annual reports, I put all that IRA mutual fund money into a Vanguard IRA. I have year-end statements for every IRA mutual fund I have owned back to the beginning and for those that did not issue end-of-year statements, I have the monthly statements. I also have the forms setting up the accounts and the forms closing the accounts. I have properly reported on each year’s 1040 the end-of-year value of whatever IRA funds I owned at the end of the year. I also have prepared and kept a paper copy of a cash-net-worth statement that shows the value of my IRA and non-IRA assets at 12/31 of every year since 1978. I now have about 3-4 file drawers of these statements.

This is the question: Do I need to continue to keep the end-of-year IRA mutual fund statements (or the monthly statements for mutual funds that did not send end-of-year statements) for these funds that I no longer own? If so, for how long?

Thank you for any help you can give me. (I tried talking to the IRS but could not get a live person and the canned question-and-answer did not address my question.)

Answer:
All IRA custodians are required to send you an annual statement of the December 31 fair market value (FMV) of your IRA by January 31 of the following year. That FMV information is also shown on IRS Form 5498, which is sent to IRS and to you each year in May. Accordingly, there is no need for you to keep the end-of-year mutual fund statements once you check them against the 5498.

2.

If a spousal beneficiary chooses to utilize a beneficiary IRA rather than commingling it with their own IRA, do they have to take RMDs (required minimum distributions) like a non-spouse would?

Answer:
Generally yes. When a spouse chooses to remain a beneficiary, then he or she has to take RMDs similar to how a non-spouse beneficiary would. There are some differences though for spouse beneficiaries. For example, if the IRA owner died before his required beginning date, the surviving spouse can wait until the deceased spouse would have been age 70 ½ to begin taking RMDs as a beneficiary.