How to keep track of partial IRA RMDs

Bobbo · July 2023

I take RMDs from different sources and I cannot figure out a way to keep track of them in Quicken, so I keep a spreadsheet for that. I would like to set up a Quicken report that I can go to, but I can't figure out how to do that. I am thinking of something similar to using a "Tag" in the Banking accounts.

I take RMDs in different ways: I have an RMD CD with my credit union where I may take a partial RMD distribution when it matures. That RMD goes to my checking or savings account. Then I have an IRA account with my Brokerage firm. That partial RMD either gets moved the non-IRA account, or I move it to my checking account.

So, it is critical that I know the total partials that I take throughout the year. Again, I keep track via a spreadsheet because I can't figure out a way to do it within Quicken.

Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Jim_Harman · July 2023

Go to the Account Details for each of your IRA accounts in Quicken and click on Tax Schedule. Make sure the Tax line item for Transfers out is set to 1099R:Total IRA taxable distrib.

When you take a distribution, use the method described in this FAQ

FAQ: Best way to handle distributions from IRA - also RMD

unknown

Apr 12, 2010

Recently started with RMD from my IRA, with the withdrawals taken from a MM fund. After withholding for state & federal taxes, the net is transferred to a non-IRA MM acount at the same investment company. For each withdrawal 2 transactions are downloaded to Quicken 2010 from my investment company: the total shows up as a normal withdrawal from the IRA MM account, and the net amount as deposit in the non-IRA MM account. The problem with doing it this way is that Quicken has nothing reflecting the Income or withholding as it would if I had received the distribution as a paycheck.

What's the best way of handling this? The method I can think of requires deleting the downloaded transactions each month and create some new ones that will keep the Quicken IRA and nonIRA in agreement with the paper statements, but also mimic a paycheck, so to speak. Is there a better way?

TIA

Then all of your distributions should appear in the 1099-R section of the Tax Schedule report.

Jim_Harman · July 2023

Thanks for the explanation.

When you click on Check it out and read the response to a question you asked, at the bottom it says, "Did this answer the question?" with options Yes and No. If you click on No, the answer is marked as Rejected, which makes us feel bad and think we misunderstood your question.

Do you remember clicking on No? If the response was a request for clarification and/or you plan to come back later, it is best not to select either Yes or No.

Boatnmaniac · July 2023

@Bobbo - When below a post one clicks on "No" for "Did this answer the question?" it will add "Rejected Answer" to the right of the time of the post as is shaded in yellow in this picture:

When I saw "Rejected Answer" for his post I had assumed that it was you who had rejected his answer since no one else had posted here and it is unusual for anyone else to mark a reply that is not an answer to their own post as "Rejected Answer".

Sorry about making this incorrect assumption and thank you for confirming that it was not you who had rejected his post. His post has now been edited to remove the "Rejected Answer" marking.

After you have had a chance to review his response in more detail, please advise if it answers your question and/or if you have any additional questions. If it does answer your question please click on "Yes" for "Did this answer the question?" as it will help others who might have the same or similar question to yours.:

(Edit: Looks like I did not see @Jim_Harman's reply before I posted mine. I guess I'm a little slow today….still recovering from a head cold! 😏)

Boatnmaniac · July 2023

@Bobbo - No need to apologize. Too often we see "Rejected Answer" with not reason stated for why it was rejected. If we don't see a reason stated we tend to scratch our heads and move on thinking that the original poster isn't interested in having a discussion. Instead of simply moving on, I will sometimes ask why it was rejected which often results in keeping the discussion going. That was my sole intent in asking the question of you. There was no intent to criticize….just wanted to see if you wanted to continue the discussion.

Yes, you can be "greedy" in asking for what you want. Sometimes what is wanted or needed is not something Quicken can support or cannot easily support. In this case, your desire to get a report with just the 1099-R data is pretty easy to set up.:

Pull up the Tax Schedule report.
Click on the Gear icon at the top right of the report which will pull up the Customize options popup.
Click on the Categories tab and click on Clear All.
If you have tax withheld from your IRA distributions, check the box the Fed Tax Withheld category you use.
Repeat #4 for State Tax Withheld if you have that withheld, as well.
Click on OK. You should see only the 1099-R data in the report.
Click on the Floppy Disc icon at the top right of the report.
You will be given the opportunity to save this customized report to My Saved Reports (or you can create a new folder to save it to).
Name the report.
I suggest that you also select Warn me when changes could impact my saved report. That helps ensure you have a chance to review any future changes before you approve saving the report (which will overwrite the previously saved report).
You could also check the box for Save report history if you wish.
Click on Save.

In the future, when you pull up this customized report from My Saved Reports in the Reports menu you will get the report just as you saved it but with any new RMD transactions that have occurred automatically added to it.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Boatnmaniac · July 2023

@Bobbo - Since you have several different IRA accounts, you might find it helpful to be able to subtotal your 1099-R report data by account. You can do this by setting up tags for your RMD transactions and assigning copy numbers to them. It's something I learned about earlier this year. You can read up on it in this thread: Re: Managing Annuity Accounts in Quicken. Just something you might want to toy around with sometime to see if it might be helpful.

Boatnmaniac · July 2023

(EDIT: Inserted 2 pics from Tax Planner that were inadvertently deleted in the original post.)

This whole subject regarding distributions from IRAs shows that there is a lot of room for improvement in how Quicken manages them. What you might want to do is review the Product Idea proposed in the following thread. The actual proposal is the 1st post on page 1 of the thread. If you agree with the proposal (which is marked "Under Consideration" but not yet "Planned") I would encourage you to cast your vote for it by clicking on the triangle voting button just beneath that 1st post in the thread on the left side. The more votes an Idea gets the more likely that Quicken will eventually add it to their development plan.:

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7864626/improve-handling-of-ira-distributions-including-qcds-and-roth-conversions

Regarding QCDs: There are some threads about this subject….search for "QCD" to get a list of posts. Maybe someone else has a better idea but to me it seems like the best solution is to do as follows:

Create a new sub-category category under the Gifts & Donations category named QCDs (or something similar to your liking).
Assign the same tax line association to QCDs as is used for IRA distributions: 1099-R:Total IRA taxable distrib.
Enter a Deposit transaction into your checking account for the net deposit of the distribution.
Split the category as you would normally do to capture the total before tax distribution transfer (positive number) and Fed tax withheld category (negative number) amounts. Then add a 3rd line for QCDs category (negative number)….the total of the split must equal the net amount of the deposit transaction.

This will then be captured in the Tax Reports and Tax Planner like shown in the following pictures:

Data as captured in Tax Planner:

Regarding your other question:

1099-R:Total IRA taxable distrib: Deposit distribution with tax withheld.

Deposit distribution + taxes withheld = Taxable distribution.
This is the tax line item that works well with Quicken in accurately capturing the data in the Tax Reports and in Tax Planner. This is why transfers out of the IRA (or other tax deferred account) needs to have the tax line item association with 1099-R:Total IRA taxable distrib.
Quicken defaults tax deferred accounts transfers out to 1099-R:Total IRA gross distrib which IMHO is wrong. So, I recommend changing the tax line association to 1099-R:Total IRA taxable distrib.

1099-R:Total IRA gross distrib:

Total IRA Gross Distribution: Deposit distribution without any tax withheld.
Tax will need to be paid with funds other than from the IRA distribution in a transaction separate from the distribution transaction.
The gross distribution does get captured properly in the Tax Reports but not in Tax Planner so that is an issue. It is not captured in Tax Planner because 1099-R:Total IRA gross distrib. is not listed in View tax form line items used here.
If you try to use the distribution process described earlier in this thread when having tax withheld (enter a deposit transaction into the deposit account with a split category for the gross amount of the distribution on one line and the tax deduction on a 2nd line) while having this incorrect tax line item association the tax withheld/paid will not be captured properly in the Tax Reports nor in Tax Planner.
Because of these issues, IMO this tax line item association in Account Details should not be used and should be changed to 1099-R:Total IRA taxable distrib.

Did this answer your questions? Any other questions?

Rocket J Squirrel · July 2023

@Boatnmaniac

Assign the same tax line association to QCDs as is used for IRA distributions: 1099-R:Total IRA taxable distrib.

I would think this is one case where "gross" is more applicable than "taxable". (Or maybe even no tax line at all.)

A QCD is generally a nontaxable distribution. Or did I miss some subtlety in your method?

Rocket J Squirrel · July 2023

I get what you're doing now. I missed that the QCD was a negative number despite you putting it in front of my eyes.

I'll have to think about this more. I'm not fully convinced. I believe a QCD must be distributed directly by the IRA custodian to the charity. So I don't see it being a component of a split transaction, nor subtracting from the taxable distribution. I think it is a "zero" tax-wise, not negative.

https://www.irs.gov/publications/p590b#en_US_2022_publink100090626

Boatnmaniac · July 2023

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20372003#Comment_20372003

I'm afraid that Quicken isn't so smart that you will be able to totally eliminate the spreadsheet. But it should be able to capture the data in reports quite effectively to make the allowable QCD deduction calculations a bit easier. With the QCD data and other charitable contributions data captured in the Tax Schedule report you should be able to export that report to Excel where you can play with the data to get what you need.

Jim_Harman · July 2023

Go to the Account Details for each of your IRA accounts in Quicken and click on Tax Schedule. Make sure the Tax line item for Transfers out is set to 1099R:Total IRA taxable distrib.

When you take a distribution, use the method described in this FAQ

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7072150/faq-best-way-to-handle-distributions-from-ira-also-rmd

Then all of your distributions should appear in the 1099-R section of the Tax Schedule report.

Boatnmaniac · July 2023

@Bobbo - Why did you reject @Jim_Harman's answer? He provided the appropriate information for how to enter RMDs into Quicken so the data is captured and displayed properly in the Tax Schedule report (as well as in the Tax Summary report and in Tax Planner).

If you are looking for something different than for what to do to capture and report RMD data, please advise what that is so an appropriate response can be provided.

Bobbo · July 2023

I don't understand. I did NOT reject Jim's answer. All I did was open the email I received, click on the "Check it out," read his answer, then disconnect as I didn't have time this morning to do anything else. It is now many hours later, and before I could even get back to Jim's post, I received your response. Why do you think that I rejected his response?

Jim_Harman · July 2023

Thanks for the explanation.

When you click on Check it out and read the response to a question you asked, at the bottom it says, "Did this answer the question?" with options Yes and No. If you click on No, the answer is marked as Rejected, which makes us feel bad and think we misunderstood your question.

Do you remember clicking on No? If the response was a request for clarification and/or you plan to come back later, it is best not to select either Yes or No.

Boatnmaniac · July 2023

@Bobbo - When below a post one clicks on "No" for "Did this answer the question?" it will add "Rejected Answer" to the right of the time of the post as is shaded in yellow in this picture:

When I saw "Rejected Answer" for his post I had assumed that it was you who had rejected his answer since no one else had posted here and it is unusual for anyone else to mark a reply that is not an answer to their own post as "Rejected Answer".

Sorry about making this incorrect assumption and thank you for confirming that it was not you who had rejected his post. His post has now been edited to remove the "Rejected Answer" marking.

After you have had a chance to review his response in more detail, please advise if it answers your question and/or if you have any additional questions. If it does answer your question please click on "Yes" for "Did this answer the question?" as it will help others who might have the same or similar question to yours.:

(Edit: Looks like I did not see @Jim_Harman's reply before I posted mine. I guess I'm a little slow today….still recovering from a head cold! 😏)

Bobbo · July 2023

I would have answered that I didn't click anything, but, based on your explanation, "No" was clicked, although I don't know why, really. It had to be a mistake. Like I said, after I read the suggestion I disconnected. Now it's time for me to play with Quicken…

Bobbo · July 2023

First, please let me apologize for all the confusion I created. The only thing I can think of is that I must have inadvertently fat fingered "No" this morning. When I went logged back in this afternoon I didn't the "Rejected Answer" banner. I am glad that you were able to delete it. I certainly don't want to make anyone feel bad, especially when I am getting help.

Second, I finally had the time to play with Quicken, and I did exactly what was suggested and it gives me just what I want. Thank you!

Is there a way to make a report that would show just the 1099-R piece of the Tax Report, or am I getting greedy?

One final note: this time I clicked on every "Yes" I could find. I hope it worked.

Boatnmaniac · July 2023

@Bobbo - No need to apologize. Too often we see "Rejected Answer" with not reason stated for why it was rejected. If we don't see a reason stated we tend to scratch our heads and move on thinking that the original poster isn't interested in having a discussion. Instead of simply moving on, I will sometimes ask why it was rejected which often results in keeping the discussion going. That was my sole intent in asking the question of you. There was no intent to criticize….just wanted to see if you wanted to continue the discussion.

Yes, you can be "greedy" in asking for what you want. Sometimes what is wanted or needed is not something Quicken can support or cannot easily support. In this case, your desire to get a report with just the 1099-R data is pretty easy to set up.:

Pull up the Tax Schedule report.
Click on the Gear icon at the top right of the report which will pull up the Customize options popup.
Click on the Categories tab and click on Clear All.
If you have tax withheld from your IRA distributions, check the box the Fed Tax Withheld category you use.
Repeat #4 for State Tax Withheld if you have that withheld, as well.
Click on OK. You should see only the 1099-R data in the report.
Click on the Floppy Disc icon at the top right of the report.
You will be given the opportunity to save this customized report to My Saved Reports (or you can create a new folder to save it to).
Name the report.
I suggest that you also select Warn me when changes could impact my saved report. That helps ensure you have a chance to review any future changes before you approve saving the report (which will overwrite the previously saved report).
You could also check the box for Save report history if you wish.
Click on Save.

In the future, when you pull up this customized report from My Saved Reports in the Reports menu you will get the report just as you saved it but with any new RMD transactions that have occurred automatically added to it.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Boatnmaniac · July 2023

@Bobbo - Since you have several different IRA accounts, you might find it helpful to be able to subtotal your 1099-R report data by account. You can do this by setting up tags for your RMD transactions and assigning copy numbers to them. It's something I learned about earlier this year. You can read up on it in this thread: Re: Managing Annuity Accounts in Quicken. Just something you might want to toy around with sometime to see if it might be helpful.

Bobbo · July 2023

Read your two responses. Will give it a try tomorrow and let you know - too tired tonight. I did, however, click "Yes" to both responses JIC…

Thanks.

Bobbo · July 2023

Just did what you suggested to get the 1099-R into a separate report and it is perfect. I never would have come up with clearing all categories.

Thanks again to the both of you.

Bobbo · July 2023

I have been sifting through threads going back several years and I can see why you - Jim_Harmon and Boatnmaniac - are considered super users!

I have two more questions for you:

Now that you steered me in the right direction for tracking RMDs, is there a way I can separate out my charitable contributions taken from the RMDs, similar to lines 4a IRA Distributions, and 4b Taxable amount (QCD) on the tax return?
Not as important, but to satisfy my curiosity, there are two choices for "Transfers out" in the Account Details - Total IRA taxable distrib. and Total IRA gross distrib. What is that all about?

Thanks,

Boatnmaniac · July 2023

(EDIT: Inserted 2 pics from Tax Planner that were inadvertently deleted in the original post.)

This whole subject regarding distributions from IRAs shows that there is a lot of room for improvement in how Quicken manages them. What you might want to do is review the Product Idea proposed in the following thread. The actual proposal is the 1st post on page 1 of the thread. If you agree with the proposal (which is marked "Under Consideration" but not yet "Planned") I would encourage you to cast your vote for it by clicking on the triangle voting button just beneath that 1st post in the thread on the left side. The more votes an Idea gets the more likely that Quicken will eventually add it to their development plan.:

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/7864626/improve-handling-of-ira-distributions-including-qcds-and-roth-conversions

Regarding QCDs: There are some threads about this subject….search for "QCD" to get a list of posts. Maybe someone else has a better idea but to me it seems like the best solution is to do as follows:

Create a new sub-category category under the Gifts & Donations category named QCDs (or something similar to your liking).
Assign the same tax line association to QCDs as is used for IRA distributions: 1099-R:Total IRA taxable distrib.
Enter a Deposit transaction into your checking account for the net deposit of the distribution.
Split the category as you would normally do to capture the total before tax distribution transfer (positive number) and Fed tax withheld category (negative number) amounts. Then add a 3rd line for QCDs category (negative number)….the total of the split must equal the net amount of the deposit transaction.

This will then be captured in the Tax Reports and Tax Planner like shown in the following pictures:

Data as captured in Tax Planner:

Regarding your other question:

1099-R:Total IRA taxable distrib: Deposit distribution with tax withheld.

Deposit distribution + taxes withheld = Taxable distribution.
This is the tax line item that works well with Quicken in accurately capturing the data in the Tax Reports and in Tax Planner. This is why transfers out of the IRA (or other tax deferred account) needs to have the tax line item association with 1099-R:Total IRA taxable distrib.
Quicken defaults tax deferred accounts transfers out to 1099-R:Total IRA gross distrib which IMHO is wrong. So, I recommend changing the tax line association to 1099-R:Total IRA taxable distrib.

1099-R:Total IRA gross distrib:

Total IRA Gross Distribution: Deposit distribution without any tax withheld.
Tax will need to be paid with funds other than from the IRA distribution in a transaction separate from the distribution transaction.
The gross distribution does get captured properly in the Tax Reports but not in Tax Planner so that is an issue. It is not captured in Tax Planner because 1099-R:Total IRA gross distrib. is not listed in View tax form line items used here.
If you try to use the distribution process described earlier in this thread when having tax withheld (enter a deposit transaction into the deposit account with a split category for the gross amount of the distribution on one line and the tax deduction on a 2nd line) while having this incorrect tax line item association the tax withheld/paid will not be captured properly in the Tax Reports nor in Tax Planner.
Because of these issues, IMO this tax line item association in Account Details should not be used and should be changed to 1099-R:Total IRA taxable distrib.

Did this answer your questions? Any other questions?

Bobbo · July 2023

That's great, thanks. I'll have to play with it and see what happens, but it seems pretty straight forward. Turns out that I have been using Total IRA Gross Distribution correctly, since I don't take taxes out of the distributions. I pay quarterly estimated taxes based on that quarter's distribution.

Rocket J Squirrel · July 2023

@Boatnmaniac

Assign the same tax line association to QCDs as is used for IRA distributions: 1099-R:Total IRA taxable distrib.

I would think this is one case where "gross" is more applicable than "taxable". (Or maybe even no tax line at all.)

A QCD is generally a nontaxable distribution. Or did I miss some subtlety in your method?

Boatnmaniac · July 2023

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20371943#Comment_20371943

I noticed that a couple of pics from Tax Planner that I thought I'd included in my prior post above were not present so I edited that post to add them back in. If you look at the one for Taxable IRA\Pension Distributions (included here, again) you will see that shaded in yellow it shows both the pre-tax gross distribution amount and QCD amount reducing the taxable amount of the pre-tax gross distribution. This example assumes that the QCD represents only a portion of the total distribution. If the QCD represents the total distribution, then the two amounts would still be shown here but they would effectively cancel each other out so there is nothing of the distribution is taxable.

Also, here is the picture of the Tax Schedule report I'd posted earlier with some added yellow shading and commentary. It is my understanding that the full distribution amount before the QCD needs to be reported but that the QCD reduces the taxable amount of that distribution. Doing it the way I suggested appears to capture that data correctly….not only in the Tax Schedule report but also, as shown above, in Tax Planner.

It was actually some time ago when I'd read and tested out what @J_Mike and @q_lurker posted in this thread: Re: How To: Charitable Distributions From My IRA. I believe that the process I spelled out above pretty much mirrors what they talked about in that thread. And it seems to me that it best captures the tax code reporting requirements as well as significantly helping to track QCD related transactions in Quicken.

If you or anyone else can poke holes in this and show how it is wrong, I'd certainly appreciate hearing about it. But for now, I just have not been able to find anything faulty in the logic and process.

Rocket J Squirrel · July 2023

I get what you're doing now. I missed that the QCD was a negative number despite you putting it in front of my eyes.

I'll have to think about this more. I'm not fully convinced. I believe a QCD must be distributed directly by the IRA custodian to the charity. So I don't see it being a component of a split transaction, nor subtracting from the taxable distribution. I think it is a "zero" tax-wise, not negative.

https://www.irs.gov/publications/p590b#en_US_2022_publink100090626

Bobbo · July 2023

All great information! Gives me plenty to play around with. Up until now I have been keeping a spreadsheet with all of my RMD information - what is actually required for the year, how much I took and from where, how much remaining, how much to QCD, etc. I am hoping to be able to get this stuff into Quicken, if possible, so I have everything in one place. If that works, I won't need a separate spreadsheet.

Boatnmaniac · July 2023

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20371974#Comment_20371974

Maybe this article will help you in your putting together your conclusions on this subject: https://access-wealth.com/qualified-charitable-distribution-tax-alert/ . In particular, scroll about 1/2-way down the page.

Boatnmaniac · July 2023

https://community.quicken.com/discussion/comment/20372003#Comment_20372003

I'm afraid that Quicken isn't so smart that you will be able to totally eliminate the spreadsheet. But it should be able to capture the data in reports quite effectively to make the allowable QCD deduction calculations a bit easier. With the QCD data and other charitable contributions data captured in the Tax Schedule report you should be able to export that report to Excel where you can play with the data to get what you need.

Bobbo · July 2023

I've been using my spreadsheet for eight years now. Just thought I would play around with Quicken to see if I can make the reports match up to my spreadsheet. I think eventually I will be able to, with your input. No rush.

Bobbo · July 2023

Well, it was a lot easier than I thought. I added an account that I named "QCD." In the IRA accounts, I did one more thing in addition to clearing all the categories as you suggested. In the Memo Contains: I put RMD. You can put anything that you want in the Memo of the transaction, e.g., person's name, year, as long as it has RMD there the report will display correctly. Now I see both the taxable RMD and the non taxable QCD RMD as separate line items in my 1099-R report.

How to keep track of partial IRA RMDs

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