Prior Year IRA Contribution Question

I'm not sure what your problem is. (Nor what Quicken version you have).

When I make a "transfer" to my IRA account between Jan 1 and Apr

15, Quicken asks me what tax year the contribution is for: current or prior. Do you not get asked?

Version: H&B 2005 Problem: Can't get the IRA contribution to show up in the proper tax year.

I must be fundamentally going about this the wrong way since I've never seen a question like that from Quicken. What I do is a "Cash Transferred Out" transaction from my money market account with the "Transfer Account" my IRA account. That's it.

What steps do you do to trigger the Quicken query?

Stephen

Not sure if this is helpful, but quicken's help on IRA shows these steps that might be prerequisites for that functionality:

---------------------------------------------------------------------- Make sure your IRA account is linked to the correct tax line item

1 Choose Tools menu > Account List. 2 Select your IRA account, and then click Edit. Quicken opens the Account Details dialog. 3 Click Tax Schedule Info and verify the tax attributes for this account. Tell the Tax Planner to include your IRA contributions 1 Choose Taxes > Tax Planner, and then click Tax Planner Summary from the menu on the left. 2 Click Adjustments to income. 3 Click Allowable IRA deduction to display the Details for this line item. 4 Choose a data source. Choose Quicken Data if all your contribution is tax-deductible. Quicken Data defaults to No projected amount. This is correct. Choose User Entered if you can only deduct part of your IRA contributions. Enter the amount you can deduct in the field provided (for example, enter 500 if you can only deduct $500.00).

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This feature requires Quicken Deluxe, Premier, or Premier Home & Business. Learn how you can add features to Quicken in minutes.

Yes, I've done this. In fact, that is the nub of the problem -- ie. you can specify one and only one category for all transfers in. What's needed is a way to categorize individual transfers. Then one could use a different categories to distinguish between current year and previous year contributions.

I don't use the Tax Planner -- never can get it to stop giving ridiculous information (e.g. right now it's showing my Actual YTD Allowable Busines Expenses as -11,003,322). No other report I can think to run (Tax, Transaction, Cash Flow, etc.) has this erroneous information.

Stephen

I have never done anything special to cause the dialog to appear; anytime I make a transfer into an IRA account between Jan 1 and Apr 15, Quicken asks me the question. (Quicken does have some known problems offering/retaining the correct tax year in some Quicken versions - Q2005 being one of them).

In a Murphy's law sort of coincidence, I have been trying to uninstall and reinstall Q2005 starting just before your question ... and am sort of in the middle of the process as I have been having a bit of difficulty. So I can't do any specific testing right now; but I can tell you that during the time I have been testing Q2005 in preparation to switching to use it full time, I entered several transfers to IRA accounts, and all of them asked me the question. I just tested with Q2002 and Q2004 - transferring from investment and non-investment accounts in an IRA account - and both of them also ask the question for each transfer.

(In response to your reply to Todd H.; I do not think separate categories is the way to go. I think Quicken is setup to be able to handle the tax year distinction correctly by utilization of the dialog question ... if you can get Quicken to ask you the question).

When you look at your Account Attributes/Edit Account Details, does the account type say "IRA"? Is your pc system date correct?

To the OP:

Is it possible that perhaps the account being used as an IRA account was an investment account carried over from a version of quicken before quicken added the "IRA" notion to its account table, and hence might look to quicken like it's not really an IRA account?

This is just a guess.

Yeah--that's the tree I'm barkin up too. 8-)

Date is correct. But, your comment on account type might be the key. This is an account I've had for a long time through many versions of Quicken. The account type is "invest" and under Tax Schedule Information I have checked "Tax-Deferred or Tax-Exempt Account". I see that Quicken (now) has an account type of "IRA". I think that this may be a type that Quicken added in a version after this account was created (I think it was created in Quicken 6). Or, I just used the wrong account type years ago.

From other posts I seem to recall that one cannot change the account type so I may be just stuck.

Thanks, Stephen

This is an account I've had for a long time through many versions of Quicken. The account type is "invest" and under Tax Schedule Information I have checked "Tax-Deferred or Tax-Exempt Account". I see that Quicken (now) has an account type of "IRA". I think that this may be a type that Quicken added in a version after this account was created (I think it was created in Quicken 6). Or, I just used the wrong account type years ago.

type so I may be just stuck.

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Ughh! I am "stuck" using Google to compose this.

But I do not think you are "stuck". In Q2005, if you have an account that was created as a regular brokerage account with the "tax deferred" property, you *can* change it to a 401k or an IRA.

Look on the Summary page for the account in the Account Attributes section at Account Type. Below "Tax-Deferred Investment" should be a blue link which reads, "Convert to a 401k or IRA". If you click that link, I believe Quicken will convert your account for you.

Then you can get to the quirky Q2005 handling of optional tax years for contributions.

I have finished reinstalling Q2005 (up to R2, where I had it before and where I am planning to leave it ... at least for now); it is possible that the behavior I describe below may have been changed in R3 (though if memory serves, folks with R3 reported the same problem).

To get a 2005 tax year contribution dated between Jan 1, 2005 and Apr

15, 2005 into a Q2005 IRA account; you must enter the transaction in the account from which the funds were contributed. For some reason, such a transaction entered directly into the IRA account will not permit tax year 2005.

To get a 2004 tax year contribution dated between Jan 1, 2005 and Apr

15, 2005 into a Q2005 IRA account; you may enter the transaction in the account from which the funds were contributed or directly in the investment account.

And you will note that when the tax year option dialog box appears, you are asked to choose between 2003 and 2004 ... not quite right; but you can get the result you want if you follow the "rules".

Thanks John! I've never paid any attention to the Summary page before. I'll try this conversion option.