Tax documents

What is Form 5498? The tax form you keep but never file

Form 5498 is the tax form you keep but never file. Your IRA custodian sends it to report what went into the account during the year and what the account was worth on December 31, and nothing on it is transcribed onto your return. It arrives at the end of May, weeks after you filed, because Box 1 has to capture contributions made all the way through April 15 and designated for the prior tax year. This guide decodes every box on Form 5498, plus the 5498-SA for health savings accounts and the 5498-ESA for Coverdell accounts, with dated 2025 and 2026 limits and the reason the form is worth keeping longer than any other tax document you own.

22 min read · Updated 2026-08-26

What Form 5498 is, and what it is for

Form 5498 is your IRA custodian’s annual report to the IRS of what went into the account and what the account was worth on December 31. You do not file it, you do not attach it, and no figure on it is transcribed onto your tax return. It arrives at the end of May, weeks after you filed, because Box 1 has to capture contributions made all the way through April 15 and designated for the prior tax year.

Two related forms share the number and the same keep-only status: Form 5498-SA for health savings accounts and Form 5498-ESAfor Coverdell education savings accounts. This guide decodes every box on all three, with dated 2025 and 2026 limits, and explains why the IRA version is the one tax document in Granite’s retention dataset with no end date on it.

Which 5498 did you get?

Read the words printed to the right of the form number. Three different forms carry “5498” in their name, they cover three unrelated kinds of account, and the title line is the fastest way to tell them apart.

  • “IRA Contribution Information” means plain Form 5498. It came from the trustee of a traditional, Roth, SEP, or SIMPLE IRA. It has twenty numbered fields across boxes 1 through 15b, and it is the one people search for.
  • “HSA, Archer MSA, or Medicare Advantage MSA Information” means Form 5498-SA. Six boxes, sent by your health savings account trustee, and the companion to the 1099-SA that reports what you spent out of the same account.
  • “Coverdell ESA Contribution Information” means Form 5498-ESA. Two boxes, sent for a Coverdell education savings account, and the shortest tax form most people will ever receive.

All three share one property, and it is the property that sends people looking for this page: none of them is filed, attached, or entered anywhere on your tax return.Copy B of Form 5498 is captioned “keep for your records,” and the participant instructions on Form 5498-SA go further and say directly that you should not attach it to your income tax return but keep it instead. These are information returns: the custodian is reporting to the IRS, and you are being copied.

That makes the 5498 family the opposite of the 1099s that arrive in January, where a number on the form becomes a number on your 1040. It is closer in spirit to the 1095-B and 1095-C: paperwork that proves something happened, held in case anyone ever asks.

The three forms, side by side

The sender tells you which account the form is about, and the account tells you which rules apply. Everything else follows from those two facts.

Forms 5498, 5498-SA, and 5498-ESA compared
What differsForm 5498Form 5498-SAForm 5498-ESA
Full title on the formIRA Contribution InformationHSA, Archer MSA, or Medicare Advantage MSA InformationCoverdell ESA Contribution Information
Who sends itThe trustee or issuer of your IRAThe trustee of your HSA, Archer MSA, or MA MSAThe trustee or issuer of your Coverdell education savings account
What it reportsContributions, rollovers, conversions, recharacterizations, RMD flags, and the December 31 account valueContributions received, rollovers, and the year-end fair market valueContributions and rollovers made for the beneficiary
Numbered fields20, across boxes 1 through 15b62
Furnished to you byMay 31 for the full form, January 31 for the value and RMD informationMay 31April 30
Filed with your return?No. Records only.No. Records only.No. Records only.
The number you actually need from itBox 1, if any of it was nondeductible (it feeds your Form 8606 basis)Nothing. Form 8889 is built from your own records.Box 1, to check you stayed under $2,000 across all accounts

Notice the last row. On an IRA 5498, exactly one figure has a long life: the Box 1 contribution total, and only if some part of it was nondeductible. On a 5498-SA, no figure on the form is used to prepare anything; Form 8889 is built from your own contribution records. On a 5498-ESA, Box 1 exists mostly so you can check that contributions from every source together stayed under the annual cap.

Why it arrives in May, months after you filed

Box 1 of Form 5498 has to include contributions made between January 1 and April 15 that you designated for the prior tax year. The custodian cannot finish the box until that window closes, so the form is filed by May 31. For tax year 2025 the deadline landed on a Sunday, moving it to June 1, 2026. For tax year 2026 it is May 31, 2027, or the next business day.

The 5498 family arrives after the April filing deadline, by designA timeline with four dates. January 31 is when the W-2, the 1099s including the 1099-R, and the IRA fair market value and required minimum distribution statement are furnished, along with the SIMPLE IRA account statement. April 15 is the tax filing deadline and also the day the window closes for making a prior-year IRA contribution. April 30 is the deadline for furnishing Form 5498-ESA for a Coverdell education savings account. May 31 is the deadline for filing Form 5498 and for furnishing Form 5498-SA. Because Box 1 of Form 5498 must capture contributions made through April 15 and designated for the prior year, the custodian cannot finish the form until after you have already filed. For tax year 2025 the dates shifted to February 2, 2026 and June 1, 2026 because the statutory dates fell on a weekend.Why the 5498 lands after you filedJan 31W-2, 1099s, 1099-RFMV + RMD statementSIMPLE IRA statementApr 15You filePrior-year contributionwindow closesApr 30Form 5498-ESAfurnishedMay 31Form 5498 filedForm 5498-SA furnishedBox 1 cannot be closed until the Apr 15 window shuts, so the form is filed May 31.Weekend shift for tax year 2025: Feb 2, 2026 and June 1, 2026. Deadlines from IRS Pub. 1099 and the 2026 Instructions for Forms 1099-R and 5498.Granite · August 2026 · granite.co

Scroll the diagram sideways to see all of it.

The whole calendar in one picture.

The 5498 is really two mailings. The IRS splits the custodian’s duty in half:

  • By January 31the custodian must furnish the account's year-end fair market value, the hard-to-value asset information from boxes 15a and 15b if any applies, and the required minimum distribution details if one is due. Trustees of SIMPLE IRAs also owe a statement of account activity on the same schedule. This is often a plain letter or a page in a December statement rather than a form that looks like a 5498 at all, which is why people ask why they received “two different documents” about the same account.
  • By May 31 the contribution information for every other kind of IRA follows, and the actual Form 5498 is filed with the IRS. For tax year 2025, the January date shifted to February 2, 2026 because January 31 fell on a Saturday.

The January statement tells you whether an RMD is coming. The May form confirms your April contribution landed in the year you meant.

Why you may get no 5498 at all, and why that is fine

Not receiving a Form 5498 is a normal outcome, not a lost envelope. The instructions are explicit: if the custodian furnished the fair market value statement (including the hard-to-value information) and the RMD details by the January deadline, and no reportable contributions, rollovers, recharacterizations, or Roth conversions were made for the year, it need not furnish another statement or a Form 5498 to report zero contributions. It still files the year-end value with the IRS.

There is a second reason a form can be missing: trustee-to-trustee transfers between like accounts are never reported. Moving a traditional IRA to another traditional IRA, or a Roth to another Roth, produces no 1099-Rand no 5498 entry, because from the IRS’s point of view nothing left the retirement system. A like-to-like transfer produces no form. Nothing is missing. A rollover, where the money passes through your hands or arrives from an employer plan, does show, in Box 2.

The distinction matters again in one place: the one-rollover-per-12-months limit. It applies to 60-day IRA-to-IRA rollovers, where a distribution is paid to you and you put it back. Trustee-to-trustee transfers are unlimited, and so are traditional-to-Roth conversions and rollovers from an employer plan. If Box 2 carries a second rollover within 12 months of an earlier one, check which kind each was, because a second 60-day rollover in that window is treated as a distribution.

What would be genuinely wrong is making a contribution, seeing it on your account statement, and receiving no Form 5498 and no 1099-R by June. Call the custodian.

Form 5498, box by box

Twenty numbered fields, in five groups: money in, what the account is worth, what kind of account it is, whether a distribution is required, and three special cases with their own code lists. The box definitions below follow the 2026 revision of Form 5498 and the IRS Instructions for Forms 1099-R and 5498. Dollar-year examples use 2026, the year printed on the current form.

Money in: boxes 1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 9, and 10

Form 5498 contribution boxes
BoxWhat the form calls itWhat it actually means
Box 1IRA contributions (other than amounts in boxes 2 through 4, 8 through 10, 13a, and 14a)Traditional IRA contributions you made during the year and through April 15 of the next year. It is gross: it includes excess contributions even if you took them back out, and the amount allocable to life insurance cost from Box 6. The parenthetical exists so you never add Box 1 to the other contribution boxes.
Box 2Rollover contributionsRollovers into the IRA, including direct rollovers from an employer plan, and including a military death gratuity or SGLI payment rolled into a Roth IRA. Traditional-to-Roth conversions do not belong here; they go in Box 3. Late rollovers (more than 60 days) go in Box 13a instead.
Box 3Roth IRA conversion amountThe amount converted from a traditional IRA to a Roth IRA during the year, reported on the receiving Roth account's form. A Roth-to-Roth rollover is a Box 2 item, not a Box 3 item.
Box 4Recharacterized contributionsA contribution (plus its earnings) moved from one type of IRA to another and treated as if it had been made to the second account all along. Note the narrowing: a Roth conversion made after 2017 can no longer be recharacterized, so Box 4 now covers contributions, not undone conversions.
Box 8SEP contributionsEmployer contributions to a SEP IRA, including SARSEP salary deferrals, on a calendar-received basis: money received this year counts this year, even if it was made for last year. Money received next year for this year is not here.
Box 9SIMPLE contributionsSIMPLE IRA contributions, employer and salary-deferral alike, on the same calendar-received basis as Box 8. Never Box 1, which is why the Box 1 parenthetical lists 8 through 10.
Box 10Roth IRA contributionsRoth contributions made during the year and through April 15 of the next year, plus rollovers from a 529 plan into a Roth IRA. Not deductible, ever, which the participant instructions say outright.

Box 4 has a deadline attached to it. You can recharacterize a contribution up to the due date of your return for the year the contribution was made, including extensions, which for a calendar-year filer who extends means October 15. A Roth conversion is the one thing that cannot be undone this way, because conversions made after 2017 cannot be recharacterized at all.

Boxes 8 and 9 are the ones that produce “wrong year” complaints. SEP and SIMPLE contributions are reported by the year the custodian received the money, not by the year the employer meant them for. A SEP contribution made in March 2026 for the 2025 plan year appears on the 2026 Form 5498. Nothing is broken; the reporting basis is simply different from the one boxes 1 and 10 use.

Box 10 also absorbed a SECURE 2.0 change: money rolled from a 529 plan into the beneficiary's Roth IRA is reported here. That route carries its own conditions, including a $35,000 lifetime limit and a 529 account open more than 15 years, and the annual amount still counts against the beneficiary's Roth contribution room.

What the account is worth: boxes 5 and 6

Form 5498 value boxes
BoxWhat the form calls itWhat it actually means
Box 5FMV of accountThe fair market value of every investment in the account at year end. If the participant died during the year and the decedent's name is shown, the amount may instead be the value on the date of death, and the executor can request a date-of-death value from the institution if a zero is shown.
Box 6Life insurance cost included in box 1Endowment contracts only. Because Box 1 is gross, the part of the premium that bought life insurance is broken out here so you can subtract it from Box 1 when working out an allowable IRA deduction. Blank on almost every ordinary IRA.

What kind of account it is: Box 7

Box 7 is four checkboxes: IRA, SEP, SIMPLE, and Roth IRA. Custodians check the one that describes the account, and default to “IRA” if they cannot tell whether an account is a SEP.

The pairs are where it gets interesting. A Roth SEP IRA is reported by checking both SEP and Roth IRA. A Roth SIMPLE IRAis reported by checking both SIMPLE and Roth IRA. SECURE 2.0 created these account types after the form’s layout was fixed, so two ticked boxes stand in for the checkbox that does not exist.

Required minimum distributions: boxes 11, 12a, and 12b

Form 5498 required minimum distribution boxes
BoxWhat the form calls itWhat it actually means
Box 11Check if RMD for next yearA checked box means you must take a required minimum distribution next year. The warning the form itself carries is the important one: an RMD may be required even if the box is not checked, and failing to take it means an excise tax on the shortfall.
Box 12aRMD dateThe date by which the amount in Box 12b has to be out of the account to avoid that excise tax.
Box 12bRMD amountThe custodian's calculation of next year's RMD. If Box 11 is checked and 12b is blank, the custodian must give you the amount or offer to calculate it in a separate statement by January 31.

Boxes 11 through 12b are optional information from the custodian's point of view and load-bearing from yours. Required minimum distributions begin at age 73, they are calculated per taxpayer rather than per form, and a custodian only knows about the accounts it holds. If your retirement money sits with three companies, three Box 12b figures are three partial answers to one obligation.

Postponed and late contributions: boxes 13a, 13b, and 13c

This group exists for contributions that broke the normal calendar and were allowed to anyway. Box 13a is the amount, Box 13b is the year it was credited to, and Box 13c is the reason code. A late rollover certified by the participant also lands in 13a, in which case 13b stays blank. Amounts here are not in Box 1 or Box 2, which is why the Box 1 parenthetical excludes them.

Form 5498 Box 13c postponed contribution codes
CodeWhy the contribution was postponed or late
FDThe contribution due date was extended because of a federally designated disaster.
POA rollover of a qualified plan loan offset.
SCA late rollover made under the self-certification procedure.
EO13239Service in Afghanistan and its associated direct support areas.
EO12744Service in the Arabian Peninsula areas.
PL115-97Service in the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt.
EO13119 or PL106-21Service in the Yugoslavia operations areas.

The combat-zone codes are also the reason a single account can generate several Forms 5498 in one year: a separate form is used to report a postponed contribution for each prior year involved. Getting three envelopes from one custodian is not a duplicate mailing.

Repayments: boxes 14a and 14b

Box 14a is the amount of a distribution you put back, and Box 14b names which kind of distribution it was. Three of the seven codes, EP, DA, and TI, arrived with SECURE 2.0 and do not appear on older forms.

Form 5498 Box 14b repayment codes
CodeWhat the repaid distribution was for
QRQualified reservist distribution.
DDQualified disaster distribution.
BAQualified birth or adoption distribution.
HPQualified first-time home purchase.
EPEmergency personal expense distribution.
DADomestic abuse victim distribution.
TITerminally ill individual distribution.

Hard-to-value assets: boxes 15a and 15b

If your IRA holds something without a market price on a screen, boxes 15a and 15b report it: 15a is the value of those specific assets, and 15b names the categories they fall into. This is the self-directed IRA corner of the form, and a figure here is a good prompt to check who produced the valuation and when.

Form 5498 Box 15b hard-to-value asset codes
CodeType of asset held in the account
AStock or other ownership interest in a corporation that is not readily tradable on an established securities market.
BShort-term or long-term debt obligation not traded on an established securities market.
COwnership interest in an LLC or similar entity, unless traded on an established securities market.
DReal estate.
EOwnership interest in a partnership, trust, or similar entity, unless traded on an established securities market.
FOption contract or similar product not offered for trade on an established option exchange.
GOther asset without a readily available fair market value.
HMore than two of the types listed in A through G are held in this IRA.

For the document itself, the fields on a contribution statement and how long to keep one, the Form 5498 reference page is the companion to this guide.

The backdoor Roth: why Box 1 and Box 3 are not double counting

If you made a nondeductible traditional IRA contribution and then converted it to a Roth, you will see the same dollars twice, on two different forms, and both are correct. This is the most common 5498 question, and the explanation is short.

Say you put $7,500 into a traditional IRA in 2026 and converted it to a Roth a week later. Three documents describe that one movement:

  1. The traditional IRA’s Form 5498 reports $7,500 in Box 1. That is the contribution going in. The custodian does not know and is not required to know whether you will deduct it.
  2. A Form 1099-R from the traditional IRA reports the money coming back out to fund the conversion, which is why the 1099-R is the form that reaches your return, not the 5498.
  3. The Roth IRA’s Form 5498 reports $7,500 in Box 3, the conversion amount arriving.

Nothing is counted twice, because none of it is counted at all from the 5498 side. The two forms record the two ends of one trip. The reconciliation happens on Form 8606, where Part I records the nondeductible contribution as basis and Part II computes the taxable part of the conversion. Done correctly on a clean backdoor Roth, that taxable part is close to zero, and the basis is what makes it so.

The trap in the maneuver is not the paperwork. It is the pro-rata rule: if you hold other pre-tax traditional IRA money anywhere, the conversion is treated as coming proportionally from taxed and untaxed dollars, and part of it becomes taxable no matter how the transaction looked in your account. Your Box 5 figures across all your traditional, SEP, and SIMPLE IRAs are the inputs to that calculation, which is one more argument for keeping every 5498 you receive.

Excess contributions still appear in Box 1

The instructions tell custodians to report gross contributions including any excess contributions, even when the excess was withdrawn. Box 1 counts deposits. Whether a deposit was allowed is settled elsewhere, on Form 5329. Seeing $8,200 in Box 1 when the limit was $7,500 does not mean your fix failed.

What actually governs the money is a separate mechanism:

  • The 6% excise tax applies to an excess IRA contribution that stays in the account, and it applies again for every year it remains. It is reported on Form 5329, not on anything the custodian sends you.
  • The fix is a timely withdrawal. Take out the excess plus the earnings it generated by the due date of your return for that year, including extensions, and you avoid the 6% charge. The withdrawal comes back to you as a Form 1099-R the following January, so the correction leaves its own paper trail.
  • An excess can also be absorbed by a later year. When that happens the custodian does not report it again on the later year's 5498, because it was already reported for the year it was actually contributed.

Health savings accounts follow the same shape: contributions over the annual limit carry a 6% excise tax that repeats each year the money stays put, and a timely withdrawal of the excess with its earnings avoids it. Publication 969 is the reference for the HSA version.

Form 5498-SA, and the Box 2 plus Box 3 trap

Form 5498-SA has six boxes, and the two that look like they should be added together must not be. It comes from the trustee of a health savings account, an Archer MSA, or a Medicare Advantage MSA, and it is the deposit side of the account whose withdrawals arrive on a 1099-SA.

Form 5498-SA boxes
BoxWhat the form calls itWhat it actually means
Box 1Employee or self-employed person's Archer MSA contributionsArcher MSA money only, made during the calendar year and through April 15 of the next year. The IRS instructions are blunt about it: no HSA information is reported in Box 1. If you have an HSA and Box 1 is empty, that is correct.
Box 2Total contributions made in the yearEverything the trustee received during the calendar year for an HSA or Archer MSA, whoever paid it. That includes money paid in during January through April 15 that was designated for the previous year, and qualified HSA funding distributions transferred from an IRA.
Box 3Total HSA or Archer MSA contributions made in the following year for this yearMoney received in the January through April 15 window of the next year and designated for the tax year printed on this form. It is here so the IRS can match a late contribution to the right year.
Box 4Rollover contributionsA rollover into this account from another HSA or Archer MSA. The IRS instructions say this amount is not to be included in Box 2.
Box 5Fair market value of HSA, Archer MSA, or MA MSAThe account's value at the end of the calendar year on the form.
Box 6Account typeA checkbox naming which of the three account types this form describes.

Now the trap. Box 2 already includes prior-year money that was paid in during this calendar year. Box 3 counts next year's early payments assigned back to this year. Adding Box 2 and Box 3 mixes two different counting bases and overstates the total. Neither box is your Form 8889 figure. That number comes from your own records of what you contributed for the year, and from the code W amount in Box 12 of your W-2 for the employer portion.

One more absence: the 5498-SA does not split employer money from your money. Box 2 is a single total. If you need the split, and Form 8889 does need it, the W-2 code W amount is where you get it. The document reference for this form lives at /documents/5498-sa.

The 5498-ESA

Two boxes, an April 30 deadline, and one number to check: whether contributions from every source stayed under $2,000 for the beneficiary.

Form 5498-ESA boxes
BoxWhat the form calls itWhat it actually means
Box 1Coverdell ESA contributionsContributions made on the beneficiary's behalf during the calendar year and through April 15 of the following year. Not deductible on any income tax return.
Box 2Rollover contributionsRollovers into the account, including direct rollovers and a contributed military death gratuity. A rollover to another Coverdell ESA for the same beneficiary, or for a family member under 30, is generally not taxable.

The Coverdell cap is $2,000 per beneficiary per year across all sources, which is the part families trip over: a grandparent's contribution and a parent's contribution to two different accounts still share one $2,000 ceiling. If the total went over, the instructions give a specific remedy and a specific deadline. Withdraw the excess plus earnings by May 31 of the following year, or an additional tax may be owed.

The beneficiary instructions say it directly: you must keep track of your Coverdell ESA basis, meaning the contributions and distributions. Nobody does it for you, and the distribution side arrives years later on a Form 1099-Q that assumes you know your own basis.

The limits behind the boxes, for 2025 and 2026

Nothing on a Form 5498 tells you whether you stayed under the limit. The form reports what went in; the cap is your problem. Here are the figures the boxes should be measured against, as of August 2026, from the IRS.

Contribution limits for tax years 2025 and 2026 for IRAs, health savings accounts, and Coverdell education savings accounts, as of August 2026; IRS Rev. Proc. 2024-25 and 2025-19
Limit20252026
IRA contribution limit (traditional and Roth combined)$7,000$7,500
IRA catch-up, age 50 and over$1,000$1,100
IRA total for someone 50 or over$8,000$8,600
HSA contribution limit, self-only coverage$4,300$4,400
HSA contribution limit, family coverage$8,550$8,750
HSA catch-up, age 55 and over$1,000$1,000
Coverdell ESA, per beneficiary, all sources combined$2,000$2,000

Two rows deserve a second look. 2026 is the first year the IRA catch-up contribution increased under indexing. It sat at a flat $1,000 for two decades, SECURE 2.0 tied it to inflation starting in 2024, and 2026 is the year the index finally moved it, to $1,100. That is why a total of $8,600 appears in the 2026 Instructions for Forms 1099-R and 5498 for participants aged 50 or over. The HSA catch-up is not indexed: it is a statutory $1,000, and each spouse’s catch-up has to go into that spouse’s own HSA.

The IRA limit is a combined ceiling across traditional and Roth accounts, not a limit per account. If you contributed $4,000 to a traditional IRA and $4,000 to a Roth in 2026, you will see two Forms 5498 that each look reasonable. Two Forms 5498 that each look reasonable can still add to $500 over the combined cap. Check the total, not the forms.

What changed for 2026

Two structural changes affect what arrives and how often. Trump accounts now exist as their own reporting track: during a beneficiary's growth period, contributions are reported on the new Form 5498-TA rather than on Form 5498, and plain Form 5498 is only used after that growth period ends. And the 5498-SA and 5498-ESA have converted to continuous-use forms, meaning the IRS now revises them as needed rather than reprinting a new edition every year, so the tax year is the printed field to read instead of the form's revision date.

Wrong, missing, or arriving in triplicate

Only the filer can correct an information return, so a wrong 5498 is a call to your custodian. The IRS does not amend a form it merely received, and there is nothing for you to amend, because the 5498 was never on your return in the first place. That is the upside of a form you never file: a correction to it almost never means a Form 1040-X.

Before you make the call, rule out the three cases where the form is right and only looks wrong:

  • Several forms from one custodian. One Form 5498 is filed per IRA plan, not per investment. Three CDs inside one IRA produce one form. Two separate IRA plans at the same trustee produce two. A postponed contribution for a prior year gets a form of its own, and a Kay Bailey Hutchison spousal IRA is reported on a separate form under the spouse's own name and TIN.
  • A contribution in the “wrong” year. Boxes 1 and 10 follow the year you designated, and boxes 8 and 9 follow the year the money was received. Check which rule applies to your box before deciding it is an error.
  • Nothing where a transfer happened. Covered above: like-to-like trustee-to-trustee transfers are not reportable.

If it is a real error, custodians have their own incentive to fix it. Failing to file a correct Form 5498 carries a $50 penalty per return under section 6693, which is small in isolation and not small across a book of accounts. Ask for a corrected form, keep the original alongside it, and note in your own records which one you relied on.

A missing form is a different call. Ask the custodian whether a form was required at all: if the January value statement went out and nothing reportable happened, the answer may honestly be no. If you have documented a contribution the custodian has no record of, that is the moment to escalate.

What to keep, and for how long

As of August 2026, Granite’s retention dataset encodes a rule for 77 document types. Of the 30 tax documents in that set, Form 5498 is the only one marked keep-permanently. Every other tax form gets a bounded clock. That is our dataset rather than an industry standard, and the reason for the outlier is specific: IRA basis has no expiry date.

Here is the mechanism. Form 5498 does not distinguish deductible from nondeductible contributions. The instructions say plainly that the custodian is not required to report which a contribution was, and that you are not required to tell the custodian. Nobody in the system tracks your basis except you, on Form 8606, filed for the year you made a nondeductible contribution. Skip that form and Publication 590-A describes the consequence: your traditional IRA contributions get treated as deductible when you withdraw, and money you already paid tax on gets taxed a second time. There is a $50 penalty for failing to file Form 8606 when required, and it is by far the smaller of the two costs.

The distance between the contribution and the withdrawal is what makes this a document-storage problem rather than a tax problem. A nondeductible contribution made at 32 gets tested at 68. Publication 590-A's own record-keeping list names the set to hold: your income tax return, and Forms W-2, 8606, and 5498. The 5498 is the third-party corroboration behind the number you wrote on the 8606 decades earlier.

For the rest of the family, keep a 5498-SA with the year's HSA records: it pairs with the 1099-SA behind your Form 8889, and HSA receipts have their own long tail if you reimburse yourself years after the expense. Keep a 5498-ESA until the Coverdell account is fully distributed, because the beneficiary's basis depends on it. Our full retention table has the clocks for the rest of the tax stack.

When Granite reads a Form 5498 it pulls the trustee, the tax year, the Box 1, 2, and 3 amounts, the Box 5 year-end value, the IRA type, the SEP, SIMPLE, and Roth contribution figures, and the account number, then files the document into that tax year's collection. On a 5498-SA it pulls the trustee, the contribution and rollover boxes, the fair market value, and the account type. That means a question you will ask in 2046, like how much nondeductible basis you built in 2026, has an answer with a citation to the page it came from instead of a folder you have to open one PDF at a time. If you are assembling the whole year's stack, the tax document checklist generates the list for your situation.

Almost every tax document produces a number on a return. The 5498 proves a number you already reported.

General information about US tax documents, not tax advice. Limits and deadlines are stated as of August 2026 from IRS sources; verify current figures before acting on them.

FAQ

5498 questions people actually ask

What is Form 5498 used for?
Form 5498 is the IRA custodian's annual report to the IRS of what went into your account: regular contributions, rollovers, Roth conversions, recharacterizations, SEP and SIMPLE money, and the account's December 31 fair market value. You do not file it and you do not attach it. Its Copy B is captioned "keep for your records." It matters later, because it is the third-party proof behind the IRA basis you track yourself on Form 8606.
Do I need Form 5498 to file my taxes?
No. Nothing on a Form 5498 is transcribed onto your return, and the form usually arrives at the end of May, weeks after the April filing deadline. The IRA deduction you claim comes from your own records, not from the form, and the custodian is explicitly not required to tell the IRS whether a contribution was deductible. Use the 5498 afterwards as a check that the custodian recorded your contribution in the year you intended.
Why does Form 5498 arrive in May?
Because Box 1 has to capture contributions made through April 15 that you designated for the prior tax year. The custodian cannot close that number until the window shuts, so the filing deadline for the form is May 31. For tax year 2025 that fell on a Sunday, pushing the date to June 1, 2026. The fair market value and required minimum distribution information travels separately and earlier, by January 31.
Why didn't I get a Form 5498 this year?
Most likely because nothing reportable happened. If your custodian already sent you a fair market value statement by the January 31 deadline and you made no contributions, rollovers, recharacterizations, or Roth conversions for the year, the IRS instructions say the custodian need not furnish another statement or a Form 5498 to you. It still files the year-end value with the IRS. A trustee-to-trustee transfer between two like IRAs also produces no form, because those are never reported.
Why doesn't my IRA transfer show up on my 5498?
Direct trustee-to-trustee transfers between two IRAs of the same kind are not reportable at all. Moving a traditional IRA to another traditional IRA, or a Roth to another Roth, generates no 1099-R and no 5498 entry. Only rollovers, where money passes through you or comes from an employer plan, land in Box 2. If you moved an account and see nothing, that is the system working, not a missing form.
Will I get a Form 5498 for a Roth conversion?
Yes. The converted amount shows in Box 3 of the receiving Roth IRA's Form 5498, and the distribution that funded it shows on a Form 1099-R from the traditional IRA. If you also made a nondeductible contribution first, that contribution appears in Box 1 of the traditional IRA's own 5498. Seeing the same dollars in two boxes on two forms is normal. Form 8606 is where the two are reconciled.
Is the FMV on my 5498 supposed to match my December statement?
Box 5 is the fair market value of every investment in the account at year end, so it usually matches a December 31 statement rather than a statement dated any other day. Two things move it: hard-to-value assets get an independent valuation that a brokerage app may not show, and if the account holder died during the year the amount reported may be the value on the date of death instead.
My excess contribution shows in Box 1 even though I took it back out. Is that wrong?
No. The instructions tell custodians to report gross contributions including excess contributions, even when the excess was withdrawn. The box is a record of what went in, not a judgment about what was allowed. If you removed the excess plus its earnings by your return's due date, you avoid the 6% excise tax, and the correction shows up through Form 5329 and a Form 1099-R, not by changing Box 1.
Does the one-rollover-per-12-months limit apply to everything in Box 2?
No. The limit covers 60-day IRA-to-IRA rollovers, where a distribution is paid to you and you redeposit it. Direct trustee-to-trustee transfers are unlimited, and so are traditional-to-Roth conversions and rollovers from an employer plan into an IRA. If Box 2 shows a second rollover amount within 12 months of an earlier one, check which kind each was. A second 60-day rollover in that window is treated as a distribution rather than a rollover.
How long do I have to recharacterize an IRA contribution?
Until the due date of your return for the year the contribution was made, including extensions, which in practice means October 15 for a calendar-year filer who extends. The recharacterized amount then shows in Box 4 of the receiving account's Form 5498 and is treated as if it had been made to that account all along. One thing you cannot undo this way is a Roth conversion: conversions made after 2017 cannot be recharacterized at all.
What is the difference between Form 5498 and Form 1099-R?
They are the two halves of the same account. The 5498 reports money in and the year-end value, arrives in May, and never touches your return. The 1099-R reports money out, arrives by January 31, and carries the taxable amount and the Box 7 distribution code that drive your Form 1040 lines 4 and 5. In a rollover or a conversion year you get both, describing the same dollars from opposite sides.
What is the difference between Form 5498 and Form 5498-SA?
Different accounts and different reporters. Form 5498 comes from an IRA custodian and covers traditional, Roth, SEP, and SIMPLE IRAs. Form 5498-SA comes from an HSA, Archer MSA, or Medicare Advantage MSA trustee and has six boxes rather than twenty. On the SA, Box 1 is for Archer MSA money only, Box 2 is the total contributed during the calendar year, and Box 3 is money paid in the following January through April 15 window and designated for this year.
Do Box 2 and Box 3 on a 5498-SA add up to my year's HSA total?
No, and adding them is the classic 5498-SA mistake. Box 2 already counts everything received during the calendar year, including money paid in early in the year for the previous year. Box 3 counts contributions received in the following year that were designated for the year on the form. The two use different counting bases, so summing them double-counts. Your Form 8889 total comes from your own records.
How long should I keep Form 5498?
Permanently, if you ever made a nondeductible traditional IRA contribution. The 5498 is the custodian's proof of what went in during a year, and IRA basis has no expiry: it stays relevant until the account is fully distributed, which can be decades later. Publication 590-A lists Forms 5498 alongside your returns, W-2s, and Forms 8606 in the records to keep. As of August 2026, of the 30 tax document types in Granite's retention dataset, Form 5498 is the only one with no end date.

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Keep every 5498 where you can still find it

Drop a 5498 into Granite and it reads the header, works out whether it's the IRA form, the SA, or the ESA, pulls the trustee, the tax year, the contribution boxes and the year-end value, and files it into that year's tax collection next to your 1099-R. IRA basis has no expiry date, which is exactly the kind of document a folder of nameless PDFs loses.