Treasury and IRS Issue Sample Forms to Streamline Retirement Account Rollovers

The Department of the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service have issued Notice 2026-49, providing four optional sample forms to standardize direct rollovers between employer retirement plans and individual retirement accounts. The guidance, issued more than three and a half years after the SECURE 2.0 Act became law, describes a common five-step workflow that begins with a Participant’s Rollover Request and continues with inter-plan form exchanges to verify and execute the transfer.

It does not modify the underlying tax treatment of rollovers or affect required minimum distribution rules, and it excludes IRA-to-IRA moves, which remain handled by the existing ACATS system. The IRS encourages electronic communication and, when unavailable, recommends that the distributing plan send a check directly to the receiving plan to avoid the paper-check problems highlighted in a 2024 GAO report. Adoption of the forms is optional, and no safe-harbor status is currently attached, though future guidance may consider such protections. The Treasury and IRS indicate that further reforms could push the process toward fully electronic transfers and eliminate remaining procedural burdens.