Need to roll over funds from an inactive account into a retirement account/residency roadblocks

Banking & Financial
1

Hi everyone,

I’m a US citizen currently living and working in France with a visa vie privée (titre de séjour). I have a teachers retirement fund in the US that recently went inactive and I need to rollover my funds into a traditional retirement account in order to avoid incurring a 30% penalty on the sum for early withdrawal or just leaving it to sit in its current state without accruing interest.

The problem I’m running into is that, since I have a titre de séjour, live in France most of the year, earn income only in France, and the fact that France is apparently on some new restricted list for banking in the us, I’m having trouble finding a solution. I’ve spoken with two counselors (with Fidelity and Charles Schwab) and neither could give me a concrete solution. No one can give me more information about rolling funds over from an inactive American retirement account into a French one without incurring a penalty either.

If anyone’s ever run into a similar problem and found a solution, I’d love to hear from you!

Thanks in advance,

Sara

2

Why not rolling over to a US account? You still need to declare income in US and FR (if you are US citizen), so no change there. To my knowledge: if it is a 401K fund you only pay taxes when you withdraw funds (which you would if you moved the fund to FR), so why not leave it in US?.
Hope it helps.