What Is IRS Form 5498? Contributions, Rollovers, and RMDs

IRS Form 5498, titled “IRA Contribution Information,” is the annual report your IRA custodian files with the IRS to document what went into your account during the year: regular contributions, rollovers, Roth conversions, recharacterizations, and the account’s year-end fair market value. You never file it yourself. The custodian sends one copy to the IRS and one to you, and the IRS uses it to check the contribution and conversion figures on your tax return.

When Form 5498 Arrives and Why It’s Late

Your custodian has to get contribution information, along with the complete form filed with the IRS, out by June 1. Year-end account value and any required minimum distribution details have to reach you by February 2.¹

That June 1 date is what confuses people. You’ve already filed in April. Why is the form arriving a month and a half later? Because IRA contributions for the prior tax year can be made all the way up to the April filing deadline, and the custodian waits until that window closes before reporting. In practice, you should already know your contribution amounts from your own records when you file. Form 5498 confirms them afterward.

The Boxes That Matter

The form runs to more than a dozen numbered boxes. A handful actually touch your return or your future planning.

Box 1: Traditional IRA Contributions

Total regular contributions to a Traditional IRA for the tax year, including catch-up contributions if you’re 50 or older. Rollovers, conversions, recharacterizations, and employer SEP or SIMPLE contributions are excluded and appear in their own boxes.² This is the number you use to figure any deduction on your federal return. Whether it’s fully deductible, partially deductible, or not deductible depends on your income and whether you’re covered by a workplace plan.

Box 2: Rollovers

Money moved into this IRA from another IRA or a qualified employer plan such as a 401(k). Rollovers are generally not taxable, but they need to be tracked. If the source account held nondeductible contributions, you report the rollover on Form 8606 to keep your basis calculations straight.³

Box 3: Roth Conversions

Amounts converted from a Traditional IRA to a Roth IRA during the tax year. Unlike rollovers, conversions trigger tax. The taxable portion is reported on Form 8606 and flows through to your Form 1040.³ If your Traditional IRA held both deductible and nondeductible money, the pro-rata rule applies; you can’t cherry-pick only the after-tax dollars.

Box 4: Recharacterizations

Contributions moved from one type of IRA to another, with the associated earnings.² A recharacterization treats a contribution as though it had originally been made to the other account type. Contributed to a Roth and later realized your income was too high? Recharacterizing it as a Traditional IRA contribution lands here.

Box 5: Fair Market Value

The total value of the IRA as of December 31.¹ This figure doesn’t appear on your current return and doesn’t owe any tax by itself. It’s forward-looking: the IRS uses the year-end value to calculate your required minimum distribution for the following year once RMDs kick in.

Box 10: Roth IRA Contributions

The Roth equivalent of Box 1. Regular Roth contributions made with after-tax dollars.² You don’t deduct Roth contributions, but the amount still establishes your basis, which controls whether future withdrawals come out tax-free. Track it on Form 8606.

Boxes 8 and 9: SEP and SIMPLE

Employer contributions to a SEP appear in Box 8, and SIMPLE contributions, including salary deferrals, appear in Box 9.² They’re kept out of Box 1 because SEP and SIMPLE accounts follow different, higher contribution limits than regular IRAs. Mixing the two together on paper can make it look as though you’ve blown past your limit when you haven’t.

The RMD Signal on the Form

Once you’re at the age when required minimum distributions apply, three boxes matter. Box 11 is a checkbox: if it’s marked, you must take an RMD for the upcoming year.² Box 12a gives the deadline, and Box 12b gives the dollar amount your custodian calculated.

Read the fine print. The form itself warns that an RMD may be required even if Box 11 is not checked.² If you hold IRAs at more than one institution, each custodian only sees its own account. Calculating and taking the correct total RMD is on you. Missing an RMD triggers an excise tax of 25% on the shortfall. That drops to 10% if you correct it within a two-year window by taking the missed distribution and filing an updated return.⁴

How the IRS Uses It to Catch Excess Contributions

Form 5498 is the IRS’s window into whether you contributed more than the law allows. Excess contributions trigger a 6% excise tax for every year they remain in the account.⁵ The 6% compounds annually until the problem is fixed.

You can avoid the penalty by withdrawing the excess, plus any earnings on it, before your tax return due date, including extensions.⁶ Miss that window and the 6% attaches every year the excess sits in the account. The usual causes of over-contribution: ignoring the Roth income phaseouts, or contributing to both a Traditional and a Roth IRA without keeping the combined total inside the annual limit.

What to Do When Your Copy Arrives

You don’t file Form 5498 with your return and you don’t need it in your hand to file. Treat it instead as a year-end audit of your IRA activity. Compare every box against your own records. Did the custodian capture the correct contribution amount? Is the rollover or conversion figure right? Does the account value look reasonable? The IRS already has the custodian’s copy and will flag anything that doesn’t match what you reported in April.

If something looks wrong, contact your custodian and ask for a corrected form. Errors on Form 5498 can ripple into IRS notices that take months to resolve.⁷ The frequent culprits are contributions posted to the wrong year, rollovers miscoded as regular contributions, and incorrect fair market values. Catching an error now beats untangling a mismatch notice later.

For nondeductible Traditional IRA contributions, Roth conversions, and basis tracking, the numbers on Form 5498 feed into Form 8606. Keep both together in your tax records. IRA basis tracking runs your entire lifetime, and reconstructing it years later from memory is close to impossible.⁸

1
Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Forms 1099-R and 5498 (2025)
2
Internal Revenue Service. Form 5498, IRA Contribution Information
3
Internal Revenue Service. IRS Form 8606 – Nondeductible IRAs
4
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 4974 – Excise Tax on Certain Accumulations in Qualified Retirement Plans
5
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 4973 – Tax on Excess Contributions to Individual Retirement Accounts
6
Internal Revenue Service. IRA Year-End Reminders
7
Internal Revenue Service. Form 5498 – Errors by IRA Trustees, Issuers and Custodians May Cause Tax Trouble
8
Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Form 8606 – Nondeductible IRAs