Where to Find Your IRA Contributions: Form 5498 and Tax Returns

To find your IRA contributions, check four places in this order: IRS Form 5498 from your account custodian, your brokerage’s online portal and account statements, your prior-year tax returns, and, as a backup, IRS transcripts or your bank’s transaction history. Each source shows a slightly different slice of the picture, and together they tell you exactly how much you have put in, when, and to which type of account. Keeping an accurate record protects you from the 6 percent excise tax on excess contributions and from being taxed twice on money you already paid taxes on.¹

Form 5498 From Your IRA Custodian

Form 5498, titled “IRA Contribution Information,” is the single most authoritative record of what you contributed. Your IRA custodian, meaning the brokerage, bank, or other financial institution that holds the account, prepares this form and sends copies to both you and the IRS. Federal law requires IRA trustees to report contribution amounts, distributions of $10 or more, and other account details to the IRS and to the account holder.²

The form arrives later than most tax documents. Because you can make contributions for the prior year up until the April 15 filing deadline, custodians typically do not issue Form 5498 until the end of May, so the institution can capture every dollar deposited for the prior tax year before generating the final report.³

Which Box Shows What

Each box on Form 5498 reports a specific type of activity:

Box 1: Traditional IRA contributions made during the calendar year and through April 15 of the following year.
Box 2: Rollover contributions, meaning money moved into the IRA from another retirement account.
Box 5: Fair market value of the account at the end of the year.
Box 8: SEP IRA contributions made by an employer.
Box 9: SIMPLE IRA contributions.
Box 10: Roth IRA contributions made during the calendar year and through April 15 of the following year.

If you participate in a SEP or SIMPLE IRA through work, those contributions land in Boxes 8 and 9 rather than Box 1, so check those lines if the form looks unexpectedly light.⁴

Your Brokerage Portal and Account Statements

You do not have to wait until May. Most brokerages and banks show real-time contribution data through their websites and apps. Look for a section labeled “Tax Documents,” “Account Activity,” or “Contributions” in your dashboard. Many platforms display a year-to-date summary that totals every deposit made during the current or prior tax year, so you can compare your running total against the annual limit before the April 15 deadline passes.

Monthly and quarterly account statements go deeper. They list every transaction — contributions, reinvested dividends, transfers, and market gains alike — so focus on line items labeled “contribution” or “deposit” rather than internal activity such as interest or dividend reinvestments. Most platforms let you filter transactions by type or date range and export the data to a spreadsheet.

These records matter most when you hold IRAs at more than one firm, because the annual contribution limit applies across all your traditional and Roth IRAs combined, not per account.¹ Pulling each account’s statement before mid-April is the surest way to confirm you have not crossed the combined cap.

Your Prior-Year Tax Returns

Your past filings create a paper trail of what you told the IRS. Which form to look at depends on whether the contribution was deductible.

Schedule 1 for Deducted Traditional IRA Contributions

If you deducted a traditional IRA contribution, the amount appears on Schedule 1 (Form 1040), Part II, Line 20.⁵ That single line tells you the exact deductible amount you claimed for the year. Whether a past contribution was deducted also determines how the money is taxed when you withdraw it: deducted dollars are fully taxable on the way out, while nondeductible dollars are not.

Form 8606 for Nondeductible Contributions

If you contributed to a traditional IRA but did not deduct it, either because your income was too high or because you chose not to, that amount should appear on Form 8606, “Nondeductible IRAs.” Line 1 shows the nondeductible contribution for that year, and Line 14 carries forward your cumulative basis, meaning the running total of after-tax dollars in your traditional IRAs across your lifetime.⁶

Basis tracking is what prevents double taxation. When you eventually take distributions from a traditional IRA holding a mix of deductible and nondeductible contributions, the IRS uses your basis to calculate how much of each withdrawal is taxable. Without an accurate Form 8606 on file, you have no documentation to prove which dollars were already taxed.⁷

If you filed Form 8606 in earlier years, the cumulative basis on Line 14 of your most recent form is the starting figure for the current year’s Line 2, so keep every year’s Form 8606 with your permanent tax records.⁶

IRS Transcripts If Your Copies Are Missing

If your personal copies of tax returns or Form 5498 are gone, two IRS transcripts can help you reconstruct the record:

Tax Return Transcript: Shows most line items from your original Form 1040 as filed, including the IRA deduction on Schedule 1. Available for the current year and the three prior tax years.
Wage and Income Transcript: Contains data from information returns the IRS received on your behalf, including Form 5498 contribution data along with W-2s and 1099s.

Transcripts are free. You can request them online through your IRS Individual Online Account, by calling the automated transcript service at 800-908-9946, or by mailing Form 4506-T and allowing 5 to 10 calendar days for delivery.⁸ A transcript is not a photocopy of your original return; if you need an exact copy, you would submit Form 4506, which carries a processing fee.⁹

Bank Transaction History as a Final Check

Your personal bank records are the last line of confirmation. Most contributions leave a checking or savings account by electronic transfer, so searching your bank’s transaction history for outgoing payments to your brokerage or IRA custodian gives you dates and dollar amounts in one list. The transfer date also helps settle which tax year a contribution belongs to, which matters most for deposits made between January 1 and April 15 that could count toward either year.

Bank records are also useful when your memory and your custodian’s records disagree. Most banks let you search historical transactions by payee, so entering the brokerage’s name should return a chronological list of every transfer you sent to that account.

Why Getting This Right Matters

Contributing more than the annual limit triggers a 6 percent excise tax on the excess for every year it remains in the account.¹⁰ You can avoid the tax by withdrawing the excess amount, plus any earnings it generated, by the due date of your tax return, including extensions. Miss that deadline and the 6 percent penalty keeps accruing each year until you correct it.¹

The other risk is quieter but larger over time. If you make nondeductible contributions and fail to file Form 8606, the IRS can impose a $50 penalty, or $100 if you overstate the nondeductible amount, though both can be waived for reasonable cause.⁶ The bigger cost is losing the paper trail of your basis, because without it the IRS may treat your entire traditional IRA balance as taxable when distributions begin. Finding your contributions now, on the forms above, is what keeps that from happening later.

1
Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Topics – IRA Contribution Limits
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Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 U.S. Code 408 – Individual Retirement Accounts
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Internal Revenue Service. About Form 5498, IRA Contribution Information (Info Copy Only)
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Internal Revenue Service. Form 5498 IRA Contribution Information
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Internal Revenue Service. 2025 Schedule 1 (Form 1040)
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Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Form 8606 (2025)
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Internal Revenue Service. About Form 8606, Nondeductible IRAs
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Internal Revenue Service. Get Your Tax Records and Transcripts
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Internal Revenue Service. Transcript Types for Individuals and Ways to Order Them
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Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 4973 – Tax on Excess Contributions to Certain Tax-Favored Accounts and Annuities