The IRS Has Written the Rollover Forms Itself. Comments Close October 23.

Moving money from one retirement plan to another is a routine transaction that is not handled in a routine way. Every plan uses its own paperwork, and a participant who leaves a job often has to broker the exchange between two administrators who do not share a form. The IRS has now written the form itself and asked what is wrong with it.

What the notice does

Notice 2026-49 attaches a set of sample forms and proposed rollover procedures as an appendix. Reporting on the notice describes two of them:

• A Participant's Rollover Request, completed by the person moving the money
• A Receiving Plan's Request to the Distributing Plan, sent between the two administrators

The procedures attach a rollover identification number so the two plans can track the same transaction, and favour electronic transfer between plans. Where an electronic transfer is not available, a check is to be made payable to the receiving plan rather than to the participant.

Where it comes from

Section 324 of the SECURE 2.0 Act of 2022 directed Treasury and the IRS to issue sample forms to simplify and standardise the rollover process for participants and plan sponsors. This notice is that work, four years on.

The sample forms will make compliance simpler and easier for both plan participants and administrators.

What it does not cover

• IRA-to-IRA transfers are outside the scope of the notice.
• Use of the forms is optional. Nothing in the notice requires a plan sponsor to adopt them.
• Section IV of the notice sets out further questions Treasury and the IRS are considering for future regulations, rather than settling them.

The date that matters

Comments on the notice, and on any other aspect of section 324, are due by October 23, 2026. That is the window in which recordkeepers, plan sponsors and participants can say whether the proposed process would work in practice before it is written into regulations.

Why it matters

Rollover friction has a cost that shows up as money left behind in old plans or cashed out on the way. A standard form does not fix that on its own, but it removes one of the reasons the transaction stalls: two administrators with no agreed way to talk to each other. Whether it gets used depends on plan sponsors adopting something they are not obliged to adopt.