How to Fill Out the TRS 6 Hardship Withdrawal Form in Texas

The TRS 6 form in Texas is the Application for Refund that members of the Teacher Retirement System use to withdraw their accumulated contributions after leaving TRS-covered employment for good. Filing it terminates your TRS membership, cancels every year of service credit you’ve earned, and ends your eligibility for a future pension, disability benefits, death benefits, and TRS-Care retiree health coverage. Because those consequences are permanent unless you return to TRS employment and repay the money later, the form has to be notarized and moves through a multi-step verification before any funds are released.

Before You File

You can submit a TRS 6 only after you have permanently ended employment with every TRS-covered employer and have no offer or promise of future TRS employment lined up. Substitute teaching is the one exception; taking substitute work does not block your refund.¹ TRS recommends waiting until your employment has actually ended before filing, because a premature application creates processing problems.²

There is no minimum service requirement. Whether you contributed for one semester or fifteen years, you can request a refund. But members with at least five years of service credit are walking away from a lifetime annuity, and that trade rarely favors the lump sum. Think carefully before you sign.

What comes back to you is limited to your own money: all member contributions your employers submitted on your behalf, any voluntary contributions you made to purchase additional service credit, and two percent interest credited to your account.³ The state and employer matching contributions stay with TRS.

Filling Out the Four Sections

Download the current TRS 6 from the Forms page on the TRS website, or ask your district’s human resources office for a copy.⁴ Put your name and Social Security number on both pages. The form has four sections.

Section 1: Member Information

Enter your full legal name, Social Security number, mailing address, phone number, date of birth, and the date your TRS-covered employment ended. If you are not a U.S. citizen, mark whether you are a resident alien, because that determines your tax withholding rate.² If the name on your TRS 6 doesn’t match what TRS has on file, include a written notice of the name change along with a copy of your Social Security card and the court order or marriage license documenting it.¹

Section 2: Refund Election

Pick one of two ways to receive the money:

Direct refund. TRS pays your contributions to you and withholds twenty percent of the taxable amount for federal income taxes, unless the total is under $200.
Rollover. TRS moves all or part of the refund into an eligible retirement plan such as an IRA, 401(k), 403(b), or governmental 457(b). If you choose this option, TRS will send you a separate Refund Rollover Election form (TRS 6A) to complete and return.²

You can split the refund, sending part to a rollover account and taking the rest directly. The TRS 6A works out the allocation.

Section 3: Payment Method

For any portion paid directly to you, choose a paper check or direct deposit. Direct deposit requires your bank’s name, routing number, and account number. If you indicate that 100 percent of the refund will be transferred outside the United States, TRS will not process a direct deposit and will mail a paper check instead.²

Section 4: Waiver and Notarized Signature

This section is a legal certification. Signing it affirms that you have permanently ended all TRS-covered employment (substitute work aside), that you have no contract or promise of future employment, and that you understand the refund terminates your membership and cancels the benefits tied to it. The form lists what you are surrendering: service retirement annuity eligibility, disability retirement, active-member death benefits, TRS-Care retiree health coverage, and the ability to transfer service credit between TRS and the Employees Retirement System of Texas.²

Your signature must be notarized. A notary public witnesses the signing and applies the official seal. If someone signs for you under a power of attorney, include a copy of that power of attorney with the form.² Many banks and UPS Store locations offer notary services, often free for account holders.

How to Submit the TRS 6

The quickest option is applying electronically through the MyTRS member portal: log in, open the Benefits tab, select “Apply for a Refund,” and follow the prompts.⁵ If you apply this way, you don’t need to submit the paper form.

If you use the paper form, you have three submission channels:

Mail: Teacher Retirement System of Texas, P.O. Box 149676, Austin, Texas 78714-0815
Fax: 512-542-6597
Secure document upload through the TRS website⁵

Certified mail with return receipt gives you proof of delivery. Keep a copy of the signed, notarized form regardless of how you submit.

How Long It Takes

TRS does not release your refund the moment your form lands. The system contacts your former employer to confirm your termination date and waits for the final monthly payroll report, which is due the month after your last paycheck. Once every document is in place, the process runs like this:¹

Up to 60 days from when TRS receives your application if employment certification or the final payroll report is still pending.
Within 31 days once TRS has every document, the employment certification, and the final payroll report.
7 to 10 business days after TRS has verified everything and approved payment.

The full process can stretch to 90 days depending on your last dates of employment and how quickly your former employer files. If TRS hasn’t received the employer’s report by the 15th of the month after your final paycheck, TRS may issue a partial refund and pay the balance within 31 days of receiving the report.¹ You can check status any time through MyTRS.

Taxes on Your Refund

The IRS treats a TRS refund as taxable income in the year you receive it.⁶ Texas has no state income tax, so state taxes are not a factor. What you owe federally depends on how the money moves.

If you elect a direct refund, TRS withholds 20 percent of the taxable amount for federal income taxes. Nonresident aliens face 30 percent withholding. No withholding applies if the total refund is under $200.⁷

A direct rollover avoids the 20 percent withholding. TRS makes the check payable to your IRA or new employer plan and sends it to you for deposit into that account. Eligible destinations include a traditional IRA, Roth IRA (with taxes owed on the conversion), an employer 401(k) or 403(b), or a governmental 457(b).⁷

If you take a direct refund and change your mind, you generally have 60 days to deposit the money into an eligible retirement plan yourself. TRS has already withheld 20 percent, so rolling over the full distribution means covering that amount from other funds. Anything not rolled over within 60 days is taxable and may trigger the early distribution penalty.⁷

Under age 59½, the IRS adds a 10 percent tax on the taxable portion of any distribution you don’t roll over. TRS-specific exceptions include separating from service during or after the year you turn 55; qualified public safety employees who separate during or after the year they turn 50 or with 25 or more years of service credit; payments due to disability or after the member’s death; substantially equal periodic payments over your life expectancy after separation; distributions up to the amount of your deductible medical expenses; and payments made under a qualified domestic relations order.⁷

What You Give Up

The waiver in Section 4 spells this out, but the list is worth repeating because the losses are permanent:

Every year of TRS service credit disappears from your record.
If you had five or more years of service, you were on track for a monthly pension for life. That eligibility is gone.
You lose coverage for a TRS disability pension.
Your beneficiaries lose eligibility for active-member death benefits.
You forfeit access to TRS-Care retiree health insurance.
You can no longer transfer service credit between TRS and the Employees Retirement System of Texas or use proportionate retirement benefits with other Texas public retirement systems.²

For someone with a few months of contributions, the trade-off is minor. For a member with a decade of service, the lifetime value of the annuity typically far exceeds the lump-sum refund.

If You Come Back to TRS Later

Returning to TRS-covered employment lets you reinstate the service credit you gave up by redepositing the eligible refund amount plus reinstatement fees. TRS decides how much of your prior credit qualifies. You can pay as a lump sum, through a rollover or trustee-to-trustee transfer from another retirement plan, or in monthly installments (installments carry additional administrative fees).²

Not every type of credit is restorable. Credit earned by a student who was required to be enrolled at the employing institution as a condition of employment, for example, must be maintained continuously and cannot be restored once withdrawn.² Ask TRS before filing whether any of your credit falls into a non-restorable category.

Avoiding Rejection and Delay

Most rejected TRS 6 forms come back for the same reason: no notary seal. The notarization requirement is absolute; TRS will not process an unnotarized application no matter how correctly everything else is filled out. Other frequent problems include a name mismatch between the form and TRS records without the supporting documents, an incomplete Section 2 where the applicant hasn’t chosen between a direct refund and a rollover, and forms submitted while active or pending TRS-covered employment still exists.

Delays typically come from the employer side. TRS cannot finalize your refund until your former employer submits its monthly payroll report reflecting your final contributions. If your district’s payroll office is slow, your refund waits. A phone call to your former HR office about the status of that report can save weeks.

Don’t Confuse TRS 6 With These Other Forms

The TRS numbering system trips people up. Here is where TRS 6 fits:

TRS 6 (Application for Refund) withdraws your contributions and ends your membership. That is the form covered here.
TRS 6A (Refund Rollover Election) is the companion you complete only if you chose the rollover option on TRS 6. TRS sends it to you after receiving your TRS 6.
TRS 15 (Designation of Beneficiary) names who receives your death or retiree survivor benefits and does not withdraw any money.⁸
TRS 30 (Application for Service Retirement) starts a monthly pension. TRS 6 does the opposite by ending your account.⁹

If your goal is to name or update a beneficiary, use TRS 15. If you are eligible to retire and want to start a pension, use TRS 30. TRS 6 exists for one purpose: permanently cashing out and leaving the system.

1
Teacher Retirement System of Texas. TRS Account Withdrawal Process
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Teacher Retirement System of Texas. Application for Refund (TRS 6)
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Teacher Retirement System of Texas. Requesting a Refund
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Teacher Retirement System of Texas. TRS Forms
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Teacher Retirement System of Texas. Refunding Your Member Account
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Internal Revenue Service. Topic No. 410, Pensions and Annuities
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Teacher Retirement System of Texas. Special Tax Notice Regarding Rollover Options Under TRS
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Teacher Retirement System of Texas. Name a Beneficiary
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Teacher Retirement System of Texas. Instructions for Service Retirement