Eli, Charles, et. al.--on advice of various experts I pulled GRNO out of an IRA (and I'm not even 59.5 yet). You do an in-kind transfer to a Roth or whatever. I'll try to summarize.
WARNING! I'M NOT A PROFESSIONAL AND CANNOT GUARANTEE THE ACCURACY OF THE FOLLOWING TAX EXPLANATION. SEEK EXPERT ADVICE BEFORE ACTING!
Though, as my experts told me, there's no established history regarding transfers to Roth IRAs, and nobody's entirely sure of how the IRS will interpret certain areas.
Taxes: 1) 10% premature distribution penalty for the underaged, like me. 2) Income taxes: these depend upon a) the ratio of deductible/non-deductible contributions to your IRA and b) the ratio of the value of your IRA on the date of withdrawal to your contributions and c) the ratio of the value of your GRNO stock on the date of withdrawal to your IRA as a whole. You are withdrawing from your IRA the percentage represented by (c). That percentage must be multiplied by (b) to determine the ratio of contributions to profits represented by that withdrawal. Income taxes will be paid on the profits portion. In addition, income taxes will be paid on the portion represented by the return of deductible contributions (a). You are not entitled to allocate all your IRA profits to other investments and your losses to GRNO; from the IRS perspective, you did not put individual stocks in your IRA, you put undifferentiated cash in your IRA and you therefore value the IRA as a whole in determining the investment results provided by that cash (think of the IRA as if it were a mutual fund in this regard).
The smaller the proportion of GRNO (@ 50 cents/share) to the rest of the assets in the particular IRA, the smaller (c) will be and the smaller the current tax consequences, etc. In my case, the collapse of GRNO temporarily pulled my entirely non-deductible IRA in which it resided under water, so that the value of the amount withdrawn (c) was actually less than the proportionate value of the original non-deductible contributions (a). So I owe no income taxes, except the 10% early distribution penalty, which effectively adds 5 cents per share to the 50 cent cost basis.
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