Verified answer

The IRS does not keep records that long. They rarely have anything going back more than 7 years and virtually everything older than 10 years has been destroyed or erased unless needed for an on-going criminal or collections case.

YOU are responsible for retaining the relevant records for as long as they are necessary. Check with the account custodians. They may have record of what was deductible or non-deductible if you told them at the time. Otherwise if you cannot prove what is what, all contributions will be presumed to have been deductible and therefore fully taxable upon withdrawal or conversion.

Not sure what the crack about "finding anyone that speaks anything near English" means. I've never had a language problem with the IRS' phone personnel. The IRS is pretty sensitive about the clarity of their CSRs on the phone, nor do they use foreign call centers. Maybe you're referring to the common tax jargon that most tax pros use?

Like vb says, if you did everything right, you should only have to find your last 8606.

When I first started doing gradual IRA to Roth IRA conversions in 2005 I knew I had made a non-deductible contribution, but no clue when. I bought a home in 2002 and did not find the relevant 1991 tax forms until the end of 2006, in time to amend 2005 before filing 2006.

You cannot take the non-deductible part out first, it gets prorated as a portion of each IRA distribution. So you have to keep track of your last former 8606 for every IRA conversion or distribution until your IRA is depleted.

For IRA to Roth IRA conversions, adjust your W-4 withholding to withhold enough tax to cover it or pay the tax with outside funds, and specifically tell your trustee not to withhold from the conversion. Otherwise any withholding from the converted amount would be subject to tax/penalty. I have been converting about $10k/yr to stay under the next higher tax bracket.

Also there is supposed to be a special deal in 2010 to spread conversion tax over 2011 and 2012.

The good news is you only need the *last* 8606 as line 2 of the form is a running total from all previous forms. So get cracking and clean the house. (When my dad died and I emptied his house one sheet of paper at a time, I eventually found the last 50 years of tax returns, brokerage statements, etc.)

The bad news is that while the IRS destroys tax returns after 7-10 years due to lack of space and does *not* keep a total, this doesn't let you off the hook to estimate the numbers. Unless you had a fire or flood--something beyond your control--you are stuck. No proof, it's *all* taxable. (This was a problem for quite a few victims of Hurricane Katrina.)

The bad news is that the significance of holding onto that *last* 8606 is not clear to most taxpayers and I suspect many of the affected taxpayers have no idea where their copy is. Some, but not all custodians, kept track. When I moved an account recently, my broker was on my case to verify the cost basis for input into their new system.

I'm lucky. When I was on the verge of putting post-tax money into an IRA, my father piped up and said, "don't do it." He pointed out that you should not voluntarily co-mingle pre- and post-tax money. (Especially if you weren't going to do for every year and who could know at age 30 what the tax law would be for the next 40 years.) Think about it, he said, record keeping and extra math when you file.

Edit: as for calling the IRS, your experience was, I'll bet, due in part to the nature of your call.

The telephone transfer guide doesn't have your exact question on it, so the only option is send you to either Accounts or Tax Law. The Accounts staff may or may not know what the form 8606 is, let alone that's what you were asking about...and they'd transfer you to Tax Law in a heartbeat.

The Tax Law staff for "IRAs and Pensions" would know the form, but their training would be limited to filing it out or using the total to calculate the taxable portion of your IRA distribution. While Tax Law personnel have Accounts training, they generally avoid going into an account....

In order to monitor that you simply must dossier 8606 at any time when you're making a nondeductible conventional IRA contribution, and at any time when you're taking a distribution (adding IRA to Roth IRA conversions). So hold any type 8606 in a dependable situation "ceaselessly", till you dossier the following 8606. You "are not able to" take the already taxed aspect out first from a conventional IRA, it finally ends up being a prorated element of "every" distribution. In 2005 I began to regularly do IRA to Roth IRA conversions at an annual quantity that could no longer be taxed greater than my marginal tax price. But I had no clue while I had made a nondeductible contribution, so I ended up paying complete tax at the conversion. I ultimately determined my tax types with the 8606 from 1991 in Dec 2006, so I filed a 1040X for 2005 to get slightly extra again earlier than submitting for 2006. It is just a little bit at a time, however will upload up ultimately.

When you make a non-deductible contribution you are supposed to fill out form 8606. Therefore look at your tax returns and add up all the deductions you took for your deductible contributions, and add up the amounts reported on 8606 for you non-deductible ones.