If you receive compensation from retirement plans, annuities, pensions or certain other types of unearned income, IRS Form 1099-R is the paperwork that documents the income you received. You need the form before filing your tax return. You may have filed taxes and then received your 1099-R if your plan administrator failed to send it or if it was lost in the mail. You may have received it but forgot to file the 1099-R when you filed your tax return. Regardless, you can take a deep breath because correcting the figures you submitted on your filed tax return is as simple as filing another form.
Tips
If your IRS Form 1099-R arrives after you have already filed taxes, and you notice any discrepancies or errors, you can file an amended return with IRS Form 1040X.
File a Corrected Form
IRS Form 1040X, Amended U.S. Individual Income Tax Return is a PDF form that you can download from IRS.gov. Complete this form if you received your 1099-R after you filed your tax return to correct any figures that you submitted. If you filed your tax return without a 1099-R before the issuing deadline of January 31, you'll want to sit tight during January in future years as you wait for the form to reach you.
Form 1099-R Issuing Deadline
The expanded name for Form 1099-R is “Distributions From Pensions, Annuities, Retirement or Profit-Sharing Plans, IRAs, Insurance Contracts, etc.,” which covers a lot of territory. All the plan administrators or other distributors of compensation included in these income categories have the same issuing deadline by which they must send 1099-R forms to the individuals who received any distributions of $10 or more during the tax year. The IRS allows the plan payers until January 31 to send out their 1099-R forms.
1099-R Filing Due Date
Because the 1099-R issuing deadline is January 31, you should receive your form by the end of the first week in February. If you have not received it by then, the IRS suggests contacting your plan administrator. If you still don't receive your form by the end of February, you can call the IRS at 800-829-1040, and a representative will intervene for you. Because this time frame is still before the tax-filing deadline, hold off filing your return until you give the IRS time to procure your 1099-R.
Filing Your Tax Return
If the tax-filing deadline is too close for comfort and you still don't have your 1099-R, go ahead and file so you don't have to pay a late-filing penalty. Fill out IRS Form 4852, Substitute for Form W-2, Wage and Tax Statement, and attach it to your tax return in place of your missing 1099-R. You can download this form at IRS.gov. Estimate the figures as best as you can. When you do receive your 1099-R, you'll be able to file Form 1040X to correct the amounts
References
- IRS: Form 1040X, Amended U.S. Individual Income Tax Return
- IRS: About Form 1099-R, Distributions From Pensions, Annuities, Retirement or Profit-Sharing Plans, IRAs, Insurance Contracts, Etc.
- IRS: Topic Number 154 - Form W-2 and Form 1099-R (What to Do if Incorrect or Not Received)
- IRS: Form 4852, Substitute for Form W-2, Wage and Tax Statement
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Victoria Lee Blackstone was formerly with Freddie Mac’s mortgage acquisition department, where she funded multi-million-dollar loan pools for primary lending institutions, worked on a mortgage fraud task force and wrote the convertible ARM section of the company’s policies and procedures manual. Currently, Blackstone is a professional writer with expertise in the fields of mortgage, finance, budgeting and tax. She is the author of more than 2,000 published works for newspapers, magazines, online publications and individual clients.