What Do You Do with Form 5498?

We’ve received a lot of enquiries asking where to enter Form 5498 in TurboTax, so we thought we’d start out with this topic. Our retirement tax expert provides this information to share…

Form 5498’s title is IRA Contribution Information, and it’s usually sent by your IRA trustee to report your IRA activity to the IRS. You get a copy of this form too.

Information reported on Form 5498 is entered in several different places in TurboTax when that information is needed, but almost all of the time it’s information that you already know:

• The amount of the IRA contributions you made for the year, whether by rollover from a 401(k) or by directly writing a check,
• The value of your IRA accounts as of the end of the year, and
• Any transfers you made to move money from a regular IRA account to a Roth IRA account

If you took money out of your IRA, those distributions would show on the Form 1099-R you receive from the IRA trustee. That’s the form that you need to enter into TurboTax.

Here’s another interesting fact: the trustees aren’t required to submit this form to the IRS until MAY 31, well after you file your tax return, so you may or may not receive Form 5498 until later. This won’t stop you from filing your tax return, though: you can get all the information you need to report your IRA contributions, value, etc. from your IRA’s year-end statements, so don’t hold up filing your return.

And by the way, trustees, NOT individual taxpayers, are required to file Form 5498 with the IRS. This means that you don’t need to send Form 5498 along with your tax return; you just hang onto it with the rest of your tax paperwork.