Withdrawing Roth IRA contributions

I have been told and have read that I can withdraw my Roth IRA contributions at any time tax & penalty free.
I asked my financial institution if they would code the distribution as contributions, not earnings, and they said no; I just need to make the withdraw as a regular distribution.
Does this sound correct?
And would I need to file something later to stipulate that the distribution was taken from my contributions?



The custodian has no way of knowing what your balance of Roth contributions is as you could have multiple Roth IRA accounts and they all are treated as one combined account. You have to keep track of this yourself so you can report the Roth distribution on Form 8606. For example, if you have made a total of 30k of regular Roth contributions and now withdraw 5k, you report your balance of 30k on line 22 of Form 8606, and the distribution is tax and penalty free as long as that balance is more than you withdrew. You may have to do some research to determine the status of your Roth accounts, but once you get current you can easily keep track of your balance. That allows you to know whether your distribution will be subject to any tax or penalty.



Great, thank you!!My custodian was able to send me a spreadsheet of all of my contributions to date.i will look into form 8606.



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