What's Form 5498?

Just today I received a couple of Form 5498 documents in the mail. These documents are mailed out (usually in May) to report information about IRA, HSA and other types of tax-preferred savings accounts. Generally speaking, taxpayers don't need to do anything with Form 5498. It's function is to report information to you and to the Internal Revenue Service, and much of the useful information is probably already reported on your tax return. Nonetheless, I like to cross check the Forms 5498 I receive, and so I wrote up an article explaining what information goes on the Form 5498, and how to cross-check that against information that's already on a tax return.