To find your IRA contributions, work through three sources in order: Form 5498 from your account custodian, your brokerage statements and online transaction history, and if those come up short, a wage and income transcript from the IRS. Between them, you can reconstruct roughly a decade of contribution history and, with a bit more work, everything you’ve ever put in. Getting this right matters because your records determine whether you’ve stayed under the annual limit, whether you can deduct what you put in, and whether you’ll be taxed twice on money you already paid tax on when you withdraw it later.
For context on the numbers you’re measuring against: the 2026 IRA contribution cap is $7,500 if you’re under 50 and $8,600 if you’re 50 or older, across all your traditional and Roth IRAs combined.1Internal Revenue Service. 401(k) Limit Increases to $24,500 for 2026, IRA Limit Increases to $7,500
Start With Form 5498
IRS Form 5498 is the single most reliable record of what went into your IRA in a given tax year. Your custodian files it with the IRS and mails or posts a copy to you by late May or early June.2Internal Revenue Service. About Form 5498, IRA Contribution Information (Info Copy Only) It arrives that late because you can make IRA contributions for a tax year all the way through April 15 of the following year, and a filing extension on your return does not extend the contribution deadline. The custodian can’t finalize the form until the contribution window closes.3Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Forms 1099-R and 5498 (2025) – Specific Instructions for Form 5498
The boxes that matter are simple. Box 1 shows traditional IRA contributions. Box 10 shows Roth IRA contributions. Rollover contributions appear in Box 2. The form captures both calendar-year deposits and any early-following-year contributions you designated for the prior tax year.3Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Forms 1099-R and 5498 (2025) – Specific Instructions for Form 5498
Keep every Form 5498 you receive. You’ll need them years from now to prove the tax-free portion of withdrawals, particularly from Roth accounts where five-year aging rules apply.
Check Your Brokerage Statements and Online Portal
If a 5498 is missing or you want to verify contributions before the form arrives, brokerage statements are the next best source. Most custodians publish a year-to-date contribution summary on December statements or in a dedicated year-end tax package, broken out by contribution type so you can separate traditional from Roth.
For a deposit-by-deposit view, log into your custodian’s online portal and pull the transaction history. Each contribution appears with a date and amount, and many platforms label whether a deposit was designated for the current or prior tax year. This line-by-line view is what you want when you made several contributions across the year and need to confirm the total. Catching a mismatch between your records and the custodian’s is far easier before you file than after.
When You Need Older Records
Digital copies of Form 5498 and year-end statements usually sit under a “Tax Center” or “Tax Documents” section of the portal. If a document has aged off the site or the account is closed, call customer service and request archived copies. Federal rules require broker-dealers to preserve customer account records for at least six years after an account closes.4eCFR. 17 CFR 240.17a-4 – Records to Be Preserved by Certain Exchange Members, Brokers and Dealers Some firms keep them longer, but don’t assume so. A research fee may apply for older paper files, and it’s worth confirming the address they have for you before requesting mailed copies.
If Your Brokerage No Longer Exists
If the firm that held your IRA has shut down or been acquired, the account was almost certainly transferred to a successor firm during the wind-down. FINRA’s BrokerCheck can help you identify who took over. If a SIPC liquidation occurred, you would have received a letter with a claim form; SIPC’s website lists active and past proceedings if you need to trace one.5FINRA. If a Brokerage Firm Closes Its Doors Even without a successor, you can still retrieve contribution data from the IRS, because custodians file Form 5498 with the government before they close.
Pull a Wage and Income Transcript From the IRS
When the custodian route fails, the IRS holds copies of what was reported to it. The document you want is the wage and income transcript, which pulls data from information returns like W-2s, 1099s, and 5498s. That includes the IRA contribution amounts your custodian reported for each year.6Internal Revenue Service. Transcript Types for Individuals and Ways to Order Them
Online
The fastest path is the IRS Individual Online Account at irs.gov. Signing in requires identity verification through ID.me, including a photo ID and a selfie. Once you’re in, you can view, print, or download wage and income transcripts on the spot. The IRS keeps these for the current year and nine prior years, so you’re looking at roughly a decade of history.6Internal Revenue Service. Transcript Types for Individuals and Ways to Order Them
By Mail
If you can’t set up an online account, submit Form 4506-T (Request for Transcript of Tax Return) by mail. Delivery takes five to ten calendar days. The Get Transcript by Mail service and the automated phone line at 800-908-9946 only provide tax return and tax account transcripts, not the wage and income version you need for 5498 data.7Internal Revenue Service. Get Your Tax Records and Transcripts
One caveat: a transcript shows only what third parties reported. If a custodian never filed a Form 5498 for a given year, the transcript won’t reflect that contribution, and your own brokerage statements become the only proof.
Reconstructing Non-Deductible Contributions
There’s one category of contribution that deserves special attention: non-deductible traditional IRA contributions. If your income was too high to deduct a traditional IRA contribution, that money was already taxed. You shouldn’t owe tax on it again when you withdraw. But the IRS only knows which dollars were already taxed if you filed Form 8606 for each year you made a non-deductible contribution.8Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Form 8606
Form 8606 tracks your basis in the traditional IRA, which is the running total of non-deductible contributions minus any non-taxable distributions already taken. That basis controls what fraction of future withdrawals comes out tax-free. Without those forms on file, the IRS treats the entire balance as pre-tax and taxes every dollar you pull out.9Internal Revenue Service. 2025 Instructions for Form 8606 – Nondeductible IRAs
If you skipped Form 8606 in prior years, you can file it late. The penalty is $50 for each year you were required to file and didn’t, and the IRS can waive it for reasonable cause.8Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Form 8606 Paying $50 to protect thousands in already-taxed dollars is a clear trade. To reconstruct the history, work through old Form 5498s and your filed tax returns, flagging years when you contributed but didn’t claim a deduction. Wage and income transcripts can fill in years where the paper records are gone.
If Your Records Show an Excess Contribution
Adding up the year’s deposits and finding you went over the limit is a common outcome when someone contributes at two custodians or when income turns out higher than expected and cuts into an allowable Roth contribution. If you catch it before your tax return deadline, including extensions, withdraw the excess plus any earnings it produced and the IRS treats the over-contribution as though it never happened.10Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Topics – IRA Contribution Limits
Miss that deadline and the excess sits in the account, triggering a 6% excise tax for every year it stays there. The tax applies to the lesser of the excess or the account’s year-end value.11Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 U.S. Code 4973 – Tax on Excess Contributions to Certain Tax-Favored Accounts and Annuities It compounds annually until you withdraw the excess or absorb it in a later year by contributing less than the limit. You report and pay it on Form 5329, which has separate sections for traditional and Roth excesses.12Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Form 5329 (2025)
Reviewing Form 5498s from every custodian side by side each spring is the simplest way to catch a problem while you can still fix it cleanly.