Are Inherited Roth IRAs Subject to the 10-Year Rule?

If you inherited a Roth IRA from someone who died on or after January 1, 2020, and you are not the surviving spouse or another eligible designated beneficiary, the inherited Roth IRA 10-year rule requires you to empty the entire account by December 31 of the tenth year after the owner’s death.¹ You do not have to take anything out in years one through nine. The account can sit and grow tax-free for the full decade, and then the whole balance has to come out by the deadline.

How the Deadline Is Calculated

The clock starts the year after the owner dies, not the date of death. If the owner died in March 2025, your deadline is December 31, 2035. Every dollar must be out of the account by that date.

The owner’s age at death does not change anything. With traditional IRAs, whether the owner had already begun required minimum distributions matters. For Roth accounts it does not, because Roth IRA owners are never required to take lifetime distributions.² The 10-year rule applies the same way whether the owner was 55 or 95.

If you inherited multiple Roth IRAs from the same person, you can pull the total from any one of them; you do not need to withdraw proportionally from each. You cannot combine inherited Roth IRAs from different decedents, though. Each has to be tracked on its own.²

Missing the Deadline

If you miss the deadline, the IRS charges a 25% excise tax on whatever amount should have come out but did not. Correct the shortfall within two years and the penalty drops to 10%. Either way, you report it on Form 5329.³ The IRS can waive the penalty if you show the shortfall was a reasonable error and you are fixing it.

No Annual Withdrawals Required

This is where inherited Roth IRAs diverge sharply from inherited traditional IRAs. As a non-spouse beneficiary under the 10-year rule, you have no obligation to take any distributions in years one through nine. Leave every dollar in the account, let it grow tax-free, and pull the entire balance in year ten if that fits your plan.²

The IRS finalized rules requiring annual distributions during the 10-year window for inherited traditional IRAs when the original owner had already started their own required minimum distributions. That wrinkle does not exist for Roth accounts. Because Roth owners never have a required beginning date, the “at least as rapidly” principle never applies. The only hard deadline is the end of year ten.

The flexibility is real. You might take nothing for several years and then withdraw during a year when your other income drops. You might smooth the withdrawals out evenly. You might take everything at once. The IRS does not care about the pattern, only that the account hits zero by the deadline.

Who Does Not Have to Use the 10-Year Rule

Several categories of beneficiaries sit outside the standard 10-year framework.

Roth IRAs Inherited Before 2020

The 10-year rule does not apply to Roth IRAs inherited from someone who died in 2019 or earlier. If that describes you, you are grandfathered into the old stretch rules and can continue taking distributions over your own life expectancy. The SECURE Act did not touch those accounts. Keep doing what you have been doing.

Eligible Designated Beneficiaries

Five categories of beneficiaries qualify as “eligible designated beneficiaries” and can use a life-expectancy method instead of the 10-year window:⁴

A surviving spouse.
A minor child of the account owner. Only the owner’s own children qualify, not grandchildren, nieces, or nephews. The exemption lasts until the child reaches the age of majority, which the final regulations set at 21 for these purposes; a new 10-year clock then starts for the remaining balance.
A disabled individual meeting the disability standard under Section 72(m)(7) of the tax code.
A chronically ill individual with a certified indefinite inability to perform daily living activities or who requires substantial supervision due to cognitive impairment.
A beneficiary who is not more than 10 years younger than the owner. This often applies to siblings, partners, or close friends near the owner’s age.

An eligible designated beneficiary who chooses the life-expectancy method calculates the annual minimum by dividing the prior year-end balance by a factor from the IRS Single Life Expectancy Table.² That annual schedule has to be followed each year. Missing a year carries the same 25% excise tax as missing the 10-year deadline.

Surviving Spouses

Spouses have more flexibility than any other beneficiary. When you inherit your spouse’s Roth IRA, you generally have three paths:¹

Roll it into your own Roth IRA. The inherited account merges with yours and you are no longer treated as a beneficiary. No lifetime required minimum distributions apply. This is the most common choice when the surviving spouse does not need the money right away.
Keep it as an inherited account and take distributions over your own life expectancy. This can make sense if you are younger than 59½ and want penalty-free access to the funds, since inherited account distributions are exempt from the early withdrawal penalty on earnings regardless of your age.
Follow the 10-year rule voluntarily. Few spouses choose this, but the option exists.

Trusts, Estates, and Other Non-Individual Beneficiaries

When a Roth IRA passes to a non-individual beneficiary such as a trust, an estate, or a charity, the 10-year rule does not apply. These beneficiaries follow the older five-year rule instead: the entire account must be emptied by December 31 of the fifth year after the owner’s death.¹ The same shorter deadline applies when the owner died without naming any beneficiary. An outdated or missing beneficiary designation can cost heirs five years of tax-free growth.

A trust named as beneficiary defaults to the five-year rule too. If the trust qualifies as a “see-through” trust, however, the IRS looks past the trust to the individual beneficiaries underneath it. To qualify, the trust must be valid under state law, become irrevocable no later than the owner’s death, have identifiable individual beneficiaries, and provide its documentation to the IRA custodian by October 31 of the year after death. When those conditions are met, the beneficiaries’ status determines the timeline; if any one of them is a standard designated beneficiary, the 10-year rule applies to everyone.

Are the Withdrawals Taxable?

Usually, no. The original contributions come out tax-free no matter what. The only question is whether the earnings are taxable, and that depends on one thing: whether the original owner’s Roth IRA satisfied the five-year holding period before they died.⁵

The five-year clock starts on January 1 of the year the owner first contributed to any Roth IRA. If the owner opened their first Roth IRA in 2018, the five-year period ended on January 1, 2023. Once that period has passed, every distribution to a beneficiary after the owner’s death is qualified. Contributions and earnings come out completely free of federal income tax.⁵ Most inherited Roth IRAs meet this test because most owners held their accounts for well over five years.

If the owner died before the five-year period ended, the earnings portion of any distribution is included in your gross income and taxed at ordinary federal rates, which range from 10% to 37% in 2026.⁶ The contributions are still tax-free, since tax was already paid on them. Only the growth is taxable. In this situation, spreading withdrawals across multiple years can keep you out of higher brackets rather than pulling everything out in year ten.

Either way, inherited Roth IRA distributions are not subject to the 10% early withdrawal penalty that normally applies to account holders under 59½. Distributions to a beneficiary after the owner’s death fall under a statutory exception.⁵

If the Beneficiary Dies Before the Account Is Empty

If you were subject to the 10-year rule and you die before the account is fully distributed, your successor beneficiary does not get a fresh 10-year window. They finish emptying the account within whatever remained of your original deadline. The clock does not restart.¹

If you were an eligible designated beneficiary stretching distributions over your life expectancy and you die before the account is empty, the rule flips. Your successor beneficiary does not continue the stretch. A new 10-year clock starts from the date of your death, and the successor must empty the remaining balance by December 31 of the tenth year after that. This distinction matters when a parent inherits a Roth IRA and names a child as successor beneficiary; the child’s timeline depends entirely on which category the parent fell into.

Inherited Roth 401(k) Accounts

Workplace Roth accounts follow the same 10-year rule as inherited Roth IRAs for non-spouse beneficiaries who inherited after 2019. The owner’s age at death is equally irrelevant. If you inherit a Roth 401(k), you also have the option to roll it into an inherited Roth IRA. The rollover does not change the 10-year deadline, but it can simplify management and open access to a broader range of investments than the employer plan offered.

1
Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Topics – Beneficiary
2
Internal Revenue Service. Publication 590-B (2025), Distributions from Individual Retirement Arrangements (IRAs)
3
Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Plan and IRA Required Minimum Distributions FAQs
4
Cornell Law Institute. 26 USC 401(a)(9) – Required Distributions
5
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 408A – Roth IRAs
6
Internal Revenue Service. IRS Releases Tax Inflation Adjustments for Tax Year 2026