In May, after posting a question about transferring my RA account to a TIAA IRA, I received very useful advice from Ray, Bob, Tim and others.  I finally completed the transfers earlier this month.  Since I had two separate contracts based on contributions at two universities, there were two separate rollovers occuring two days apart.  The transactions went through fairly smoothly although the forms package sent from TIAA was pretty confusing and funds weren't transferred from TREA to Traditional, as I specified on the forms.  I spotted the error on the website and did the transfer by phone.

I've now received two "Confirmations of a Request for a Direct Rollover".  Both forms show "Investment in the Contract" and state that "the investment in the Contract is the contribution made with after-tax dollars (salary deduction contributions).  The contributions in the first plan were made from 1968-1974 and so the stated investment in the contract is, in fact, the sum total of my salary deductions.  The contributions in the second plan were made from 1975-1983 and the stated investment amount appears to be less than my total salary contributions.   So, perhaps salary deductions became pre-tax in the early 1980s.

I was very surprised to learn that almost all of my contributions to TIAA-CREF - I left the academic world in 1983 - were post-tax.  A former colleague had mentioned something about post-tax contributions during a lunch a few months ago.  I disagreed with him and I asked the TIAA-CREF phone center if they could tell me my pre-tax and post-tax amounts.  They couldn't and I forgot about it until the rollover requests arrived.

This is not a big deal since the toal amount is small and less than 1% of the total IRA balance.  Rather than establish a 1% basis in the IRA and have a negligible 1% of my RMDs be post-tax, it would have been cleaner to request a check for the small post-tax amount from TIAA.  I recently did this when I rolled over a 401-K and withdrew the 8% that was post-tax.  I don't know if TIAA permits such post-tax withdrawals.

I'm curious about TIAA policy on required minimum distributions from an RA with pre- and post-tax monies.  Does TIAA differentiate between pre- and post- tax money on a 1099-R?   

In trying to reconstruct my salary contribution history I reviewed my annual reports and came across this interesting tidbit "In 1981 a charge of 3.5% was deducted from each TIAA premium and 1.75% was deducted from each CREF premium (earlier reports noted that an additional 1.5% would be deducted from CREF annuity payments).  As previously announced, such deductions have been eliminated for all premiums due and applied to regular TIAA-CREF annuities on and after January 1,1982.  Operating expenses will be deducted instead from investment earnings . . . ."   So almost all of my contributions had the "load charge" deducted.  I'm not sure I was paying attention at the time - not that I had an alternative.  Despite the load charges, those of us who invested pre-1982 and stayed with it have done very well - however, our balances would be even bigger if every pre-1982 contributed dollar was invested!   

Jerry