What You Should Know About the One-Per-Year Limit on IRA Rollovers That You Don't Know

• Author: Seymour Goldberg
• Profession: Senior partner in the law firm of Goldberg & Goldberg, P.C., Woodbury, New York
• Pages: 157-163

157

WHAT YOU SHOULD

KNOW ABOUT

THE ONE- PER-

YEAR LIMIT ON IRA

ROLLOVERS THAT YOU

DON’TKNOW

Practitioners must become aware of the tax- free IRA rollover rules that

are applicable as of January 1, 2015. This is necessary in order for prac-

titioners to protect their clients from major tax problems and penalties if

clients violate the new IRA rollover rules that start in 2015.

The following is a brief analysis of the old rules:

1. The IRS for many years indicated that if you have multiple IRAs,

it was permissible to do multiple IRA rollovers if you followed the

rules set out in IRS Publication 590.

2. The old rules as described in IRS Publication 590 stated the fol-

lowing:

Waiting period between rollovers. 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.