What Is Form 5498: IRA Contribution Information?

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- Form 5498 is an annual report of your IRA activities (e.g. contributions, RMDs, etc.).
- Anyone who contributed to an IRA will get one in the mail between January and mid-June in 2025.
- You should keep the form in case of an audit or to report your contributions, but there’s no action required on your part.
What is Form 5498?

- Federal: $79 to $139. Free version available for Simple Form 1040 returns only.
- State: $0 to $69 per state.
- Expert help or full service filing is available with an upgrade to Live packages for a fee.
Who gets one?
When is Form 5498 issued?
What do you do with a 5498 tax form?
- It’s good to keep tax forms in case of an audit. In particular, maintain a paper trail for big deductions such as traditional IRA contributions. If, for whatever reason, the IRS questions traditional IRA contributions you deducted in years past, Form 5498 can serve as third-party documentation of those contributions.
- Form 5498 may be helpful for properly reporting your IRA contributions on your Form 1040 (individual income tax return). Traditional IRA contributions are an important deduction for many taxpayers, and Form 5498 shows you the amount of traditional contributions that the IRS is expecting you to report for a specific account and tax year. Using it can help you avoid mistakes when adding up the total amount of IRA contributions you can deduct. (Overcontributed? How to fix excess IRA contributions.)
- Form 5498 may be useful for putting together a financial plan. Good financial planning means staying within your budget while also preparing for your retirement goals. If you're meeting with a financial planner and making or updating your plan, Form 5498 may provide useful documentation on how much and how frequently you're contributing to your IRA.
- Box 3 of Form 5498 can help you stay on top of tax liability from a Roth IRA conversion. If you previously contributed money to a traditional IRA, deducted those contributions, and then converted that traditional IRA to a Roth IRA, you now owe taxes on that money. The “Roth IRA Conversion Amount” box of Form 5498 can help you fill out Form 8606 (Nondeductible IRAs), which tells you how much taxable income your Roth IRA conversion generated.
- Federal: $79 to $139. Free version available for Simple Form 1040 returns only.
- State: $0 to $69 per state.
- Expert help or full service filing is available with an upgrade to Live packages for a fee.
Article sources
- 1. Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Forms 1099-R and 5498 (2024). Accessed Dec 11, 2024.
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