When a customer wants to remove a contribution as an excess before their tax return date, are the earnings calculated on the total IRA plan balance or just on that particular account it was put into?

It's been a super long time since I had something like this happen but I'm 99.99% certain that it is earnings calculated on the only excess portion that need to be removed as well.

I'm sorry, not sure what you're trying to tell me. Please elaborate. Thanks

When removing the excess contribution the IRA owner must also removed the net income attributable to the excess contribution.

I recently found this article on calculating earnings on an excess and found it to be very helpful when explaining to the staff.