Rolling Over After Tax 401K Contrib to Roth IRA

[tskeeter]

IRS Notice 2014-54 pretty clearly says you can roll after tax contributons from a 401K account into a Roth IRA as a non-taxable event.  How about the gains related to the after tax contrbutions (401K account documents identify the after tax contributions as well as the combined value of the after tax contributions and the related gains)?  Can they be rolled into the Roth IRA as a non-taxable event also?  Or would rolling the gains into a Roth create a taxable event? 

[teen persuasion]

I thought the gains had to be rolled to a tIRA.  From there you could convert to Roth, but I don't think you can roll gains directly to a Roth.

[bobosensei]

When I wanted to rollover my 401k that had pre and post tax money vanguard was able to get the pretax funds directly from my old employer, but the post tax money could only be sent to me though I was allowed to endorse the check and mail it to vanguard to be put into a roth ira.  There was no distinction made between my post tax contributions and their growth.  Now maybe vanguard did something behind the scenes I wasn't aware of, but from my end everything was very simple.  I called vanguard and they conferenced in my old employer, got what they needed and stayed on the line while my old employer explained to me about the post tax money coming directly to me.  After my old employer hung up vanguard gave me instructions for how to endorse the check and what account numbers to use.

I was a bit concerned that this would trip something when I filed my taxes online because I max a roth every year, but HR Block handled everything just fine.