SPECIAL TAX NOTICE REGARDING YOUR ROLLOVER OPTIONS
UNDER A GOVERNMENTAL 401(a) PLAN
You are receiving this notice because all or a portion of
a payment you are receiving from the [INSERT NAME OF PLAN] (the
"Plan") is eligible to be rolled over to an IRA or an employer plan.
This notice is intended to help you decide whether to do such a rollover. [The following sentence must be included if
sending the notice electronically:] YOU MAY REQUEST A PAPER COPY OF THIS
NOTICE FROM THE PLAN ADMINISTRATOR AT NO CHARGE TO YOU.
Rules that apply to most payments from a plan are
described in the "General Information About Rollovers" section.
Special rules that only apply in certain circumstances
are described in the "Special Rules and Options" section.
GENERAL INFORMATION ABOUT ROLLOVERS
How can a rollover affect my taxes?
You will be taxed on a payment
from the Plan if you do not roll it over. If you are under age 59
½ and do
not do a rollover, you will also have to pay a 10% additional income
tax on early distributions (unless an exception applies).
If you do a rollover to a
traditional IRA or an eligible employer plan, you will not have to pay tax
until you receive payments later from the IRA or plan, and the 10% additional
income tax will not apply if those payments are made after
you are age 59 ½ (or if an exception applies).
If you do a rollover to a Roth IRA, you will be taxed on the
amount rolled over (reduced by any after-tax amount). However, if you are under
age 59 ½ at the time of the rollover, the 10% additional income tax will not
apply. See the section below titled "If you roll over your payment to a
Roth IRA" for more details.
Where may I roll over the payment?
You may roll over the
payment to either an IRA (an individual retirement account or individual
retirement annuity) or an employer plan (a tax-qualified section 401(a) plan,
section 403(b) plan, or governmental section
457(b) deferred compensation plan) that will accept the rollover. The rules of
the IRA or employer plan that holds
the rollover will determine your investment options, fees, and rights to
payment of the rolled over amount in the future. Further, the amount rolled over will become subject to the tax rules
that apply to the IRA or employer plan.
How do I do a rollover?
There are two ways to do a rollover. You can do either a direct rollover or a 60-day rollover.
If you do a direct rollover, the Plan will make the payment directly to your IRA or an employer plan. You should contact the IRA sponsor or the administrator of the employer plan for information on how to do a direct rollover.
If you do not do a
direct rollover, the Plan is required to withhold 20% of the
payment for federal income taxes. If you do
not do a direct rollover, you may
still do a rollover by making a deposit into an IRA or eligible employer plan that will accept it. You will have 60 days
after you receive the payment to make the deposit. This means that, in
order to roll over the entire payment in a 60-day rollover, you must use other
funds to make up for the 20% withheld. If you do not roll over the entire
amount of the payment, the portion not rolled over
will be taxed and will be subject to the 10% additional income tax on early distributions if you are under age 59 ½ (unless an
exception applies).
How much may I roll over?
If you wish to do a rollover, you may roll over all or
part of the amount eligible for rollover.
Any payment from the Plan is eligible for rollover, except:
· Certain payments spread over a period of at least 10 years or over your life or life expectancy (or the lives or joint life expectancy of you and your beneficiary) (This means that your lifetime monthly benefits are not eligible for rollover.)
· Required minimum distributions after age 70 ½ (or after death)
· Hardship distributions [Delete if your plan does not have hardship distributions.]
· Corrective distributions of contributions that exceed tax law limitations
·
Loans treated as deemed distributions (for
example, loans in default due to missed
payments before your employment ends) [Delete if your plan does not have loans.]
·
Cost of life
insurance paid by the Plan [Delete
if your plan does not have actual life insurance in the plan.]
· Contributions made under special automatic enrollment rules that are withdrawn pursuant to your request within 90 days of enrollment [Delete if your plan does not have automatic enrollment contributions.]
The Plan administrator or the payor can tell you what portion of a payment is eligible for rollover.
If any portion of your payment is taxable but cannot be rolled over, the mandatory withholding rules described above do not apply. In this case, you may elect not to have withholding apply to that portion. If you do nothing, an amount will be taken out of this portion of your payment for federal income tax withholding. To elect out of withholding, ask the Plan administrator for the election form and related information.
If I don't do a rollover, will I have to pay the 10% additional income tax on early distributions?
If you are under age 59 ½, you will have to pay the 10% additional income tax on early distributions for any payment from the Plan (including amounts withheld for income tax) that you do not roll over, unless one of the exceptions listed below applies. This tax is in addition to the regular income tax on the payment not rolled over.
The 10% additional income tax does not apply to the following payments from the Plan:
· Payments made after you separate from service if you will be at least age 55 in the year of the separation
· Payments that start after you separate from service if paid at least annually in equal or close to equal amounts over your life or life expectancy (or the lives or joint life expectancy of you and your beneficiary)
· Payments from a governmental defined benefit pension plan made after you separate from service if you are a public safety employee and you are at least age 50 in the year of the separation [Delete if your plan does not have public safety employees.]
·
Payments made
due to disability
· Payments after your death
· Corrective distributions of contributions that exceed tax law limitations
·
Payments made
directly to the government to satisfy a federal tax levy
·
Payments made
under a qualified domestic relations order (QDRO)
·
Payments up to
the amount of your deductible medical expenses
· Payments from a deemed IRA or attributable to elective deferrals under a 401(k) plan or 403(b) annuity made while you are on active duty if you were a member of a reserve component called to duty after September 11, 2001 for more than 179 days [Delete if do not have deemed IRA, 401(k), or 403(b).]
· Payments of certain automatic enrollment contributions requested to be withdrawn within 90 days of the first contribution. [Delete if your plan does not have automatic enrollment contributions.]
· Cost of life insurance paid by the Plan [Delete if your plan does not have actual life insurance in the plan.]
If I do a rollover to an IRA, will the 10% additional income tax apply to early distributions from the IRA?
If you receive a payment from an IRA when you are under age 59 ½, you will have to pay the 10% additional income tax on early distributions from the IRA, unless an exception applies. In general, the exceptions to the 10% additional income tax for early distributions from an IRA are the same as the exceptions listed above for early distributions from a plan. However, there are a few differences for payments from an IRA, including:
· There is no exception for payments after separation from service that are made after age 55.
· The exception for qualified domestic relations orders (QDR0s) does not apply (although a special rule applies under which, as part of a divorce or separation agreement, a tax-free transfer may be made directly to an IRA of a spouse or former spouse).
· The exception for payments made at least annually in equal or close to equal amounts over a specified period applies without regard to whether you have had a separation from service.
· There are additional exceptions for (1) payments for qualified higher education expenses, (2) payments up to $10,000 used in a qualified first-time home purchase, and (3) payments after you have received unemployment compensation for 12 consecutive weeks (or would have been eligible to receive unemployment compensation but for self-employed status).
Will I owe State income taxes?
This notice does not describe any State or local income
tax rules (including withholding rules). [Insert
any desired explanation of state/local tax rules for eligible rollover
distributions.]
SPECIAL RULES AND OPTIONS
If your payment includes after-tax contributions
After-tax contributions included in a payment are not taxed. If a payment is only part of your benefit, an allocable portion of your after-tax contributions is generally included in the payment. If you have pre-1987 after-tax contributions maintained in a separate account, a special rule may apply to determine whether the after-tax contributions are included in a payment.
You may roll over to an IRA a payment that includes after-tax contributions through either a direct rollover or a 60-day rollover. You must keep track of the aggregate amount of the after-tax contributions in all of your IRAs (in order to determine your taxable income for later payments from the IRAs). If you do a direct rollover of only a portion of the amount paid from the Plan and a portion is paid to you, each of the payments will include an allocable portion of the after-tax contributions. If you do a 60-day rollover to an IRA of only a portion of the payment made to you, the after-tax contributions are treated as rolled over last. For example, assume you are receiving a complete distribution of your benefit which totals $12,000, of which $2,000 is after-tax contributions. In this case, if you roll over $10,000 to an IRA in a 60-day rollover, no amount is taxable because the $2,000 amount not rolled over is treated as being after-tax contributions.
You may roll over to an employer plan all of a payment that includes after-tax contributions, but only through a direct rollover (and only if the receiving plan separately accounts for after-tax contributions and is not a governmental section 457(b) plan). You can do a 60-day rollover to an employer plan of part of a payment that includes after-tax contributions, but only up to the amount of the payment that would be taxable if not rolled over.
If you miss the 60-day rollover deadline
Generally, the 60-day rollover deadline cannot be
extended. However, the IRS has the limited authority to waive the deadline
under certain extraordinary circumstances, such as when external events prevented you from completing the rollover by the
60-day rollover deadline. To apply for a waiver, you must file a private
letter ruling request with the IRS. Private letter ruling
requests require the payment of a nonrefundable user fee. For more information, see IRS Publication 590,
Individual Retirement Arrangements (IRAs).
If you were born on or before January 1, 1936
If you were born on or before January 1, 1936 and receive a lump sum distribution that you do not roll over, special rules for calculating the amount of the tax on the payment might apply to you. For more information, see IRS Publication 575, Pension and Annuity Income.
If you roll over your payment to a Roth IRA
You can roll over a payment from the Plan made before January 1, 2010 to a Roth IRA only if your modified adjusted gross income is not more than $100,000 for the year the payment is made to you and, if married, you file a joint return. These limitations do not apply to payments made to you from the Plan after 2009. If you wish to roll over the payment to a Roth IRA, but you are not eligible to do a rollover to a Roth IRA until after 2009, you can do a rollover to a traditional IRA and then, after 2009, elect to convert the traditional IRA into a Roth IRA. The Plan administrator is not responsible for verifying your eligibility to make a rollover to a Roth IRA. (IRS Notice 2008-30)
If you roll over the
payment to a Roth IRA, a special rule applies under which the amount of
the payment rolled over (reduced by any after-tax amounts) will be taxed. However,
the 10% additional income tax on early distributions will not apply (unless you
take the amount rolled over out of the Roth
IRA within 5 years, counting from January 1 of the year of the rollover). For
payments from the Plan during 2010 that are rolled over to a Roth IRA, the
taxable amount can be spread over a 2-year period starting in 2011.
If you roll over the payment to a Roth IRA, later payments
from the Roth IRA that are qualified distributions will not be taxed (including
earnings after the rollover). A qualified distribution from a Roth IRA is a
payment made after you are age 59 ½ (or after your death or disability, or as a qualified first-time homebuyer distribution
of up to $10,000) and after you have had a Roth IRA for at least 5
years. In applying this 5-year rule, you count
from January 1 of the year for which your first contribution was made to a Roth
IRA. Payments from the Roth IRA that are not qualified distributions
will be taxed to the extent of earnings after the rollover, including the 10%
additional income tax on early distributions (unless an exception applies). You
do not have to take required minimum distributions
from a Roth IRA during your lifetime.
You cannot roll over a payment from the Plan to a designated Roth account in an employer plan.
For more information, see IRS Publication 590, Individual Retirement Arrangements (IRAs). You should consult your tax advisor if you are interested in rolling over your distribution to a Roth IRA.
If you are an eligible retired public safety officer and your pension payment is used to pay for health coverage or qualified long-term care insurance [Delete this subsection if your plan does not pay premiums for retired public safety officers.]
If you retired as a public safety officer and your retirement
was by reason of disability or was after normal retirement age, you can exclude
from your taxable income plan payments paid directly as premiums to an accident or health plan (or a qualified long-term
care insurance contract) that your employer
maintains for you, your spouse, or your dependents, up to a maximum of $3,000
annually. For this purpose, a public safety officer is a law enforcement
officer, firefighter, chaplain, or member of
a rescue squad or ambulance crew.
The Form 1099-R that
you receive from the Plan administrator will report the deducted insurance
premium as taxable. If you want to take advantage of this $3,000 exclusion, you
must report the amount claimed on Form 1040. The instructions to Form 1040
explain that the taxable amount received from the Plan, reduced by the amount
of qualified premiums deducted and paid by the Plan (not to exceed $3,000),
must be entered on line 16b of the Form 1040. Next to the entry, in the margin,
you must write the letters "PSO."
This is an annual election—you will need to report the exclusion for
each year in which you want to claim the exclusion.
If you have an outstanding loan that is being offset [Delete this subsection if your plan does not
have loans.]
If you have an outstanding loan from the Plan, your Plan
benefit may be offset by the amount of the loan, typically when your employment
ends. Unless you do a 60-day rollover in the amount of the loan offset to an IRA or
employer plan, the loan offset amount is treated as a distribution to
you at the time of the offset and will be taxed (including the 10% additional income tax on early distributions,
unless an exception applies).
If you are not a plan member
Payments after death
of the member. If you receive a
distribution after the member's death that you do not roll over, the
distribution will generally be taxed in the same
manner described elsewhere in this notice. However, the 10% additional income tax on early distributions and the special rules
for public safety officers do not apply, and the special rule described under the section "If you were born on or
before January 1, 1936" applies
only if the member was born on or before January 1, 1936.
If you are a surviving spouse. If you receive a payment from the Plan as the surviving spouse of a deceased member, you have the same rollover options that the member would have had, as described elsewhere in this notice. In addition, if you choose to do a rollover to an IRA, you may treat the IRA as your own or as an inherited IRA. [Delete the next sentence if not applicable.] Note that although state law recognizes same-sex domestic partners, a spouse for federal tax law purposes must be a person of the opposite sex to whom you are married.
An IRA you treat as your own is treated like any other IRA of yours, so that payments made to you before you are age 59 ½ will be subject to the 10% additional income tax on early distributions (unless an exception applies) and required minimum distributions from your IRA do not have to start until after you are age 70 ½.
If you treat the IRA as
an inherited IRA, payments from the IRA will not be subject to the 10%
additional income tax on early distributions. However, if the member had started taking required minimum
distributions, you will have to receive
required minimum distributions from the inherited IRA. If the member had not started taking required minimum
distributions from the Plan, you will not have to start receiving required minimum distributions from the
inherited IRA until the year the member
would have been age 70 ½.
If you are a surviving beneficiary other than a spouse. If you receive a payment from the Plan because of the member's death and you are a designated beneficiary other than a surviving spouse, the only rollover option you have is to do a direct rollover to an inherited IRA. Payments from the inherited IRA will not be subject to the 10% additional income tax on early distributions. You will have to receive required minimum distributions from the inherited IRA.
Payments under a qualified domestic relations order. If you are the spouse or former spouse of the member who receives a payment from the Plan under a qualified domestic relations order (QDRO), you generally have the same options the member would have (for example, you may roll over the payment to your own IRA or an eligible employer plan that will accept it). If you are an alternate payee other than the spouse or former spouse of the member, you generally have the same options as a surviving beneficiary other than the spouse, so that the only rollover option you have is to do a direct rollover to an inherited IRA. Payments under the QDRO will not be subject to the 10% additional income tax on early distributions.
If you are a nonresident alien
If you are a nonresident alien and you do not do a direct rollover to a U.S. IRA or U.S. employer plan, instead of withholding 20%, the Plan is generally required to withhold 30% of the payment for federal income taxes. If the amount withheld exceeds the amount of tax you owe (as may happen if you do a 60-day rollover), you may request an income tax refund by filing Form 1040NR and attaching your Form 1042-S. See Form W-8BEN for claiming that you are entitled to a reduced rate of withholding under an income tax treaty. For more information, see also IRS Publication 519, U.S. Tax Guide for Aliens, and IRS Publication 515, Withholding of Tax on Nonresident Aliens and Foreign Entities.
Other special rules
If a payment is one in a series of payments for less than 10 years, your choice whether to make a direct rollover will apply to all later payments in the series (unless you make a different choice for later payments).
If your payments for the year are less than $200, the Plan is not required to allow you to do a direct rollover and is not required to withhold for federal income taxes. However, you may do a 60-day rollover.
[Delete this paragraph if your plan does not have
automatic rollovers.] Unless you
elect otherwise, a mandatory cashout of more than $1,000 will be directly rolled over to an IRA chosen by the Plan administrator or the payor.
A mandatory cashout is a payment from
a plan to a member made before age 62 (or normal retirement age, if later) and without consent.
You may have special rollover rights if you recently
served in the U.S. Armed Forces. For more
information, see IRS Publication 3, Armed Forces' Tax Guide.
NOTICE PERIOD
Generally, payment cannot be made from the Plan until at
least 30 days after you receive this notice. Thus, you have at least 30 days to
consider whether or not to have your payment rolled over. If you do not wish to
wait until this 30-day notice period ends before your election is processed,
you may waive the notice period by making an affirmative election indicating
whether or not you wish to make a direct rollover. Your payment will then be
processed in accordance with your election as soon as practical after it is
received by the Plan administrator.
FOR MORE INFORMATION
You may wish to consult with the Plan administrator or payor, or a professional tax advisor, before taking a payment from the Plan. Also, you can find more detailed information on the federal tax treatment of payments from employer plans in: IRS Publication 575, Pension and Annuity Income; IRS Publication 590, Individual Retirement Arrangements (IRAs); and IRS Publication 571, Tax-Sheltered Annuity Plans (403(b) Plans). These publications are available from a local IRS office, on the web at www.irs.gov, or by calling 1-800-TAX-FORM.