A 53 yr old client wants to roll/transfer after-tax 401k contributions (not Roth 401k contributions) from his 401k to his Roth IRA as an in-service withdrawal. IRS website sounds as though he must take a proportional amount of pretax dollars as well for any withdrawal – so to roll/transfer out all after-tax, he must also take all pretax. Plan SPD says he cannot take pretax contributions until age 59 ½ unless they are for special allowed purposes, and there is vesting of the employer pretax contributions which limits him from taking those dollars.

So, if he has $106K total in the plan, with $50K pretax deferral, $6K Employer match, $30K after-tax deferrals, and $20K earnings. (1) Is he limited to roll $7.8K to his Roth because it must be in proportion to the overall pretax and post-tax ratio of the account? (2) In the previous question, would he also have to take $20K in earnings in order to do that? Those can be rolled over to a traditional IRA, correct? (3) if he cannot access the pretax deferral or the employer dollars, is there any other option available to him to get the full pretax amount rolled over to his Roth IRA?

Would the process be different if he just rolled/transferred these dollars to his Roth 401k account as opposed to his Roth IRA?