Personal Finance and Investing

within the first year, or in the first 5 years.

It has to be retitled just so, and be transferred from institution to institution (or account to account) to a properly titled IRA beneficiary account (or words close to that).

If you just cashed it in, then, well, taxes are due on the entire amount (unless its a Roth IRA).

Someone mentioned a 60 day rollover period where you can take possession (cash it out, stick it in a regular account of yours, whatever) and then put it in the right place - an IRA beneficiary account. So if you are within the 60 day period from when you transferred it to a regular account of yours or whatever or cashed it out or whatever, you MIGHT be able to put it in a proper IRA beneficiary account. I'm not sure that the 60 day period applies to inherited IRAs.

https://www.irahelp.com/phpBB forum is full of experts on this kind of stuff.

In my case, I had help from my parent's estate planners, and Fidelity had a great explanation guide book too (the IRA account was at Fidelity). From the beginning, even though I was well below age 70.5 (and still am), I have to annually take a Required Minimum Distribution according to a table. But that's a lot better than getting taxed on it all in one year! And the benefits of tax-deferred compounding are big.

This was more than 10 years ago, and the RMD's are still quite small. (The percentage amount one must withdraw each year grows each year).

Good luck!