tracking IRA distributions

MartinRubenstein

Each month I get an IRA distribution from my brokerage account (Schwab) that goes into my checking account. There also is a federal and a state tax payment. Schwab downloads these as 3 transactions. In order to get the tax payments visible to Quicken, I have a $0 transaction in my checking account that has a split with transfer from IRA and then payment out for tax. I'd like to get this to work with a monthly bill and income reminder, but cannot get the transactions in the 2 accounts to match when I accept downloads so I end up having to fix this up manually each month. Anyone know if there is a way to automate this successfully?

Tom Young

The generally accepted way of dealing with distributions from IRAs when tax is withheld is to post the net distribution to you in your checking Account and then split that amount as a Transfer of the entire distribution from the IRA, minus the taxes.

You can make this a Reminder and delete the downloads from Schwab.

NotACPA

Also note that Tax withholding CAN'T be done in a retirement account … they must be done in a taxable account or Q's tax reports won't see them.

Thus the action recommended by @Tom Young

hobeybirmingham

I am having the same problem. My IRA distributions from my IRAs should show up as income in my income and expense report, and although IRA distributions are categorized as Income for 1099 purposes, they do not show up. However, distributions from my annuity IRA do show up there. Why the inconsistency?

Tom Young

"I am having the same problem. My IRA distributions from my IRAs should show up as income in my income and expense report, and although IRA
distributions are categorized as Income for 1099 purposes, they do not show up. However, distributions from my annuity IRA do show up there.
Why the inconsistency?"

Since we can't see your actual entries in the IRA Accounts or in the checking Account and as you haven't described, precisely, how the the distribution out of the annuity IRA "shows up" in the income and expense report, it's somewhat difficult to answer your "inconsistency" question.

In the same way that transfers of cash from a savings Account to a checking Account aren't "income" under Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP), a transfer from an IRA Account and a checking Account are also not income, except for Statutory (tax) purposes. So generally you would not expect that any transfer from any IRA Account to the checking Account to show up on a Spending report.

That suggests to me that you are accounting for distributions from the IRA Account as transfers but accounting for money from the IRA as an income Category as income Categories do show up on Spending reports.

You can get the transfer from the IRA Account to checking as a form of "income" by customizing the Spending report to include that transfer in the Income section of the report, where it will show up as "FROM (Name of IRA Account)."

NotACPA

I'd suspect that the IRA was created as non-taxable and the Annuity wasn't.

Tax transactions, if recorded in a non-taxable account, won't be seen by the tax reports.