Rolling IRA into Company Plan

Jan 10, 2010 4 Replies

For reasons discussed in another post, I am thinking of rolling a significant amount of money from my IRA into my company's 401(k) plan. Can anyone think of any implications other than the following:


1) I will now be limited to the investment choices in the employer's plan. (Not a big deal; I am mainly in index funds, and the employer plan has an S&P 500 fund with expenses of 5 basis points. I also have a larger amount in a Roth IRA that I will be able to keep investment control over.)


2) I can no longer convert the amount to a Roth if I choose. However, I can in effect "convert" $22,000 a year (I am over 50) by contributing to the employer plan on a Roth rather than after-tax basis.


3) I could now borrow against the money if I wanted to take a loan from the employer's plan. (Not that I can see doing this.)


4) If the employer plan has an annuity option when I retire, I would be able to take advantage of that for the full amount. (However, I could always do the rollover later.)



Have I missed anything?



Thanks.


I looked into doing this for a client a good number of years ago. At that time it wasn't allowed. Has that changed?

IIRC it's always been possible if the IRA was a "conduit" IRA holding only a rollover from a prior employer's plan and earnings on it, but no conributions. That was changed several years ago, and now you can roll any pre-tax IRA money into your current employer's plan if the plan allows it. See Pub 590.

Phil Marti Clarksburg, MD

Actually, it was allowed but ONLY from a rollover IRA that was funded from a 401(k) plan with no additional contributions. As far as I know, that wasn't changed prior to 2008. (I'd have to look it up to see if it's part of a recent change since now we can do all kinds of transfers between plans.)

messagenews:Xns9CFCC43941C2Cspamtraplexregiacom@130.133.4.11...

In the other thread, someone mentioned that there was an IRS chart about what types of contributions could be rolled. I also thought it was only conduit IRA's that could be rolled, but that doesn't seem to be the case. It's up to the employer, I think, how their plan is structured. I'm pretty sure that Roth IRA's can't be rolled, even if the plan has a Roth option. But I could be wrong about that.

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