J.K. Lasser's Your Income Tax 2013: For Preparing Your 2012 Tax Return

7.7 Tax-Free Rollovers From Qualified Plans

A rollover allows you to make a tax-free transfer of a distribution from a qualified retirement plan to another qualified plan that accepts rollovers or to a traditional IRA. A 403(b) plan (7.21), or a state or local government 457 plan (7.22) that accepts rollovers, is treated as a qualified retirement plan. If a rollover is made to a traditional IRA, later distributions received from the IRA are taxable under the IRA rules (8.8).

The rollover rules in this section apply whether you are an employee or are self employed.

Caution for plan participants born before January 2, 1936. If the distribution is for part of your account balance and you roll it over, a later lump-sum distribution from the same plan will not qualify for averaging even if you were born before January 2, 1936 (7.4). If a rollover is made to a traditional IRA and you plan to keep working, the possibility of claiming averaging later from another employer plan may be preserved if the IRA qualifies as a a “conduit IRA”(7.8).

Eligible rollover distributions.

Almost all taxable distributions received from a qualified corporate or self-employed pension, profit-sharing, stock bonus, or annuity plan are eligible for tax-free rollover. Exceptions include substantially equal periodic payments over your lifetime or over a period of at least 10 years, hardship distributions, and minimum distributions (7.13) required after age 70½; see below for the list of ineligible distributions. ...