1 See Institute Memorandum to Pension Members No. 15-99 and Pension Operations Advisory Committee No.
16-99, dated March 17, 1999.
[10815]
March 19, 1999
TO: PENSION MEMBERS No. 16-99
PENSION OPERATIONS ADVISORY COMMITTEE No. 18-99
RE: IRS RELEASES INSTRUCTIONS TO 1999 FORMS 1099-R AND
5498-REVISED ATTACHMENT
______________________________________________________________________________
As indicated in a recent memorandum, the Internal Revenue Service has released instructions to
1999 Forms 1099-R and 5498.1 This memo included 1998 instructions to Forms 1099-R and 5498. The
1999 instructions to Forms 1099-R and 5498 are attached.
The instructions to 1999 Form 1099-R, Distributions from Pensions, Annuities, Retirement or
Profit-Sharing Plans, IRAs, Insurance Contracts, etc., includes four changes to Form 1099-R. First, the
IRS changed Code J to “[d]istribution from a Roth IRA.” Therefore, financial institutions must use
Code J to indicate distributions from both Conversion Roth IRAs and Roth IRAs. Other changes
include the elimination of Code K, addition of Code R, “[r]echaracterized IRA contribution” to be used
to report recharacterization transactions, and elimination of Codes B and C, because the death benefit
was eliminated for taxpayers who died after August 20, 1996.
The IRS revised Form 5498, IRA Contribution Information, in order to identify
recharacterization transactions. The IRS deleted the “Roth conv.” checkbox and added a new
checkbox, “Rechar.” to recognized recharacterization transactions.
Kathryn A. Ricard
Assistant Counsel
Attachment
Note: Not all recipients receive the attachment. To obtain a copy of the attachment referred to in this Memo, please call the
ICI Library at (202) 326-8304, and ask for attachment number 10815. ICI Members may retrieve this Memo and its
attachment from ICINet (http://members.ici.org).