This post comes from Robert Powell at partner site MarketWatch.
This column has been updated to clarify that the one-year period during which two or more IRA-to-IRA rollovers should be avoided starts when the IRA owner receives the distribution.
Uncle Sam’s Tax Court just ruled that the one-rollover-per-yea<!–r rule applies to all of a taxpayer’s IRAs rather than to each IRA separately. And that ruling, experts say, is in direct conflict with IRS Publication 590, the bible for IRAs.
“Industry leaders, financial advisers, and everyone else who handles IRAs are stunned,” said Denise Appleby, the editor and publisher of The IRA Authority.
According to Appleby, there are two ways to move money between IRAs:
- Transfers, which are not reported to the IRS and not reported on a tax return. The IRA owner never touches the money. You can do this as often as you like, whenever you like, Appleby said.
- And rollovers. With this method, the IRA owner takes the money as a distribution and they have 60-days to rollover (put back) the amount in an IRA. And this, you can do only once per 12-month period, said Appleby.
According to Appleby, the IRS, through their publications and regulations, has said for at least 20 years that the rollover method applies on a “per-IRA” basis. In other words, if you have 10 IRAs, you can do 10 rollovers for the year (12-month period), as long as an IRA does it only once (or the year).
Here’s the guidance found in Publication 590, which everyone viewed as gospel:
Generally, if you make a tax-free rollover of any part of a distribution from a traditional IRA, you cannot, within a one-year period, make a tax-free rollover of any later distribution from that same IRA. You also cannot make a tax-free rollover of any amount distributed, within the same one-year period, from the IRA into which you made the tax-free rollover. The one-year period begins on the date you receive the IRA distribution, not on the date you roll it over into an IRA.
The IRS gives this example: You have two traditional IRAs, IRA-1 and IRA-2. You make a tax-free rollover of a distribution from IRA-1 into a new traditional IRA (IRA-3). You cannot, within 1 year of the distribution from IRA-1, make a tax-free rollover of any distribution from either IRA-1 or IRA-3 into another traditional IRA.
However, the rollover from IRA-1 into IRA-3 does not prevent you from making a tax-free rollover from IRA-2 into any other traditional IRA. This is because you have not, within the past year, rolled over, tax free, any distribution from IRA-2 or made a tax-free rollover into IRA-2.
Enter Alvan and Elisa Bobrow, who had a few IRAs.
In 2008, Alvan rolled over two distributions from his IRAs and took the position that the rollovers were valid because they were done in a timely manner, and involved different IRAs, Appleby wrote in her analysis of the court case. His position was that he had not broken any rules, as explained by the IRS in their publication for the past 20 years.
The IRS disagreed and determined that only one of the two rollovers was valid. So, Uncle Sam and the Bobrows went off to court. And the Tax Court — much to the surprise of all IRA experts — agreed with the IRS.
The mistake cost the Bobrows an additional $51,298 in income tax and a penalty of $10,260. Maybe they should be thankful; it could have cost them $31,000 more, according to Appleby. You can read the gory details in Bobrow v. Comm’r, T.C. Memo. 2014-21.
So what was the bottom line? In essence, only one of the Bobrow’s distributions was eligible for rollover during the 12-month period. In fact, that Tax Court concluded that the Internal Revenue Code Section 408(d)(3)(B) limitation — the relevant section of the federal tax code — applies to all of a taxpayer’s retirement accounts and that regardless of how many IRAs he or she maintains, a taxpayer may make only one nontaxable rollover contribution within each one-year period.
In other words, we’ve all been operating under the impression that what was written in Publication 590 — you know, the IRS’ very own publication — was correct. But it’s not.
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