Rollover route finder

What this tool checks

Moving retirement money between accounts is usually tax free when it follows the rules, and taxable when it does not. The IRS publishes a rollover chart that marks each move between common account types Yes or No, with footnotes. This tool reads that chart for the move you describe, then adds the rules around it: withholding, the deadline, the once-per-12-months limit, the tax result and the forms that will report it.

It answers one move at a time. It does not pick an account, a provider or an amount, and it does not tell you whether a rollover is a good idea. The result is one of four labels: allowed, allowed with conditions, not allowed, or stop: get help.

How the money moves matters

A direct rollover or trustee-to-trustee transfer sends the money from one account provider to the other. A check made out to the new account counts as direct. Nothing is withheld, and there is no 60-day clock, because nothing was paid to you.

When the money is paid to you instead, the IRS gives you 60 days from the day you receive it to deposit it in the new account. A payment from a workplace plan to you also has 20% federal tax withheld from the taxable part, even if you plan to roll it over. To roll over the full amount, the withheld 20% has to come from other money within the 60 days. An IRA paying you is different: IRA distributions are generally subject to 10% withholding unless you elect out.

A plan loan offset has its own deadline. If a loan in good standing is offset because you left the employer or the plan ended, the offset amount can be rolled over until your tax return due date, including extensions, for that year.

The once-per-12-months rule

You can make only one IRA-to-IRA rollover in any 12-month period, counting all of your IRAs together, including SEP and SIMPLE IRAs. The limit covers the paid-to-you kind only. According to the IRS, it does not apply to trustee-to-trustee transfers between IRAs, conversions from a traditional IRA to a Roth IRA, or rollovers into or out of workplace plans.

When the tax changes

Moving pre-tax money into a Roth IRA is a conversion. The amount moved is included in your income for the year. A conversion made after 2017 cannot be undone by recharacterizing it. Pre-tax money can move into a designated Roth account only as an in-plan rollover within the same plan, and that is taxable too.

Roth money stays Roth only in Roth accounts. A designated Roth account in a 401(k), 403(b) or 457(b) can go to a Roth IRA or to another designated Roth account. A Roth IRA cannot go into a workplace plan at all.

After-tax money needs care. If your traditional IRA holds nondeductible contributions, only the part that would otherwise be taxable can go into a workplace plan. Form 8606 tracks that basis. For a plan account holding both pre-tax and after-tax money, the IRS page on after-tax rollovers explains how payments to two destinations at once can send the after-tax part to a Roth IRA.

Money that cannot be rolled over

A required minimum distribution (RMD) for the year cannot be rolled over, and neither can a hardship distribution from a workplace plan. Tick those boxes when they apply, and the result separates them out.

A SIMPLE IRA has a two-year rule. During the two years after your employer first puts money into it, money can move tax free only to another SIMPLE IRA. Moving it anywhere else in that period counts as a withdrawal, and the additional tax rises from 10% to 25% unless an exception applies. A SIMPLE IRA can also receive rollovers from other accounts, but only after its own two-year period.

When this tool stops

Some situations follow rules this tool does not map. It stops, rather than guess, for inherited or beneficiary accounts, for employer stock with net unrealized appreciation, and for combinations the IRS sources we checked do not settle, such as an RMD still due during a trustee-to-trustee transfer, or after-tax money moving from one workplace plan to another. It also stops if the two IRS versions of the chart ever disagree for a route. When it stops, the plan administrator, the IRA custodian or a tax professional can confirm the answer.

Non-governmental 457(b) plans run by tax-exempt employers follow different rules and are not covered. Neither are Roth SIMPLE IRAs, Roth SEP-IRAs or state taxes.

How we checked the rules

Every route was read from two IRS sources: the rollover chart PDF and Table 1-4 in Publication 590-A. The two agree for all 49 routes this tool covers. Each line in a result comes with the IRS page it rests on. Form box and code references come from the 2026 instructions for Forms 1099-R and 5498 and the 2025 instructions for Form 8606.

This is educational information, not tax advice. Your answers stay in your browser.