To make a qualified charitable distribution from your IRA, you instruct your IRA custodian to send money directly from your account to a qualifying public charity, with the check made payable to the charity rather than to you. When done correctly, the transferred amount stays out of your taxable income, can satisfy your required minimum distribution, and does not require you to itemize deductions to get a tax benefit. The mechanics are straightforward, but a few rules — age, account type, payee, and timing — decide whether the IRS treats the transfer as a QCD or as an ordinary taxable withdrawal.
Confirm You’re Eligible
You must be at least 70½ years old on the day the money actually leaves your IRA, not the day you submit the paperwork.1Internal Revenue Service. Seniors Can Reduce Their Tax Burden by Donating to Charity Through Their IRA There is no upper age limit.
Traditional IRAs, rollover IRAs, and inherited IRAs are the typical accounts used. SEP and SIMPLE IRAs are excluded by the statute, but IRS guidance allows a QCD from one of these if the plan is inactive for the year — meaning no employer contributions were made for the plan year ending with or within your tax year.2Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Plans FAQs Regarding IRAs Distributions (Withdrawals) If your employer is still funding the SEP or SIMPLE, you can’t use it for a QCD.
Roth IRAs are technically eligible, but since qualified Roth withdrawals are already tax-free, there’s rarely a reason to route a gift through one. If you hold both, use the traditional IRA.
How to Request the Distribution From Your Custodian
Start with your IRA custodian, the institution that holds the account. Most have a distribution request form, and many have one specifically labeled for QCDs. Before you fill it out, get three pieces of information from the charity:
- The organization’s full legal name as it appears on its IRS determination letter.
- Its Employer Identification Number (EIN).
- The mailing address for donation processing, which is often different from the general office address.
The payee line is the detail that makes or breaks the QCD. The check must be payable directly to the charity. If it comes out in your name, the IRS treats the money as an ordinary taxable distribution and the QCD benefit is lost. Some custodians mail the check straight to the charity; others send it to you to forward. If it lands in your mailbox, deliver it without endorsing or depositing it.
Processing generally runs five to ten business days, though it varies by institution.3Fidelity. Qualified Charitable Distributions (QCDs) For the distribution to count in a given tax year, the charity must receive the funds by December 31 of that year. Requests submitted in the last week of December often miss the cutoff, so leave a buffer.
Make Sure the Charity Qualifies
The recipient has to be a public charity eligible to receive tax-deductible contributions under Section 170(b)(1)(A) of the Internal Revenue Code.4Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 408 Individual Retirement Accounts Most 501(c)(3) organizations — churches, hospitals, schools, community nonprofits — qualify.
Three types of organizations are shut out, even with 501(c)(3) status:
- Donor-advised funds.
- Private foundations.
- Supporting organizations under Section 509(a)(3).
If you have any doubt, verify the organization’s status through the IRS Tax Exempt Organization Search tool at irs.gov before you submit the distribution form.
A separate one-time election lets you direct a QCD into a charitable gift annuity or charitable remainder trust, subject to its own rules and a lower dollar cap. That option is available only once in your lifetime and has additional restrictions on beneficiaries and payout terms — worth researching separately if it interests you, but it is not the ordinary QCD process.
How Much You Can Send in 2026
For the 2026 tax year, each individual can make up to $111,000 in qualified charitable distributions.5Internal Revenue Service. 2026 Amounts Relating to Retirement Plans and IRAs, as Adjusted for Changes in Cost-of-Living A married couple where both spouses own IRAs can give up to $111,000 each from their own accounts, for a household total of $222,000. The cap is indexed for inflation under the SECURE 2.0 Act and adjusts each year.
Only dollars that would otherwise be taxable count against the limit. If your IRA contains nondeductible contributions you already paid tax on, those don’t consume your QCD allowance.4Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 408 Individual Retirement Accounts
Timing It to Satisfy Your RMD
If you are 73 or older and have to take required minimum distributions from a traditional IRA, a QCD counts toward the RMD. Send a $15,000 QCD against a $15,000 RMD and the requirement is met, with none of that amount added to your taxable income.2Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Plans FAQs Regarding IRAs Distributions (Withdrawals) A partial QCD works the same way for its portion; a $10,000 QCD against a $15,000 RMD still leaves $5,000 that you must take as a regular, taxable withdrawal.
Timing matters. The first dollars out of your IRA in a year with an RMD go toward satisfying that RMD. Do the QCD before any other withdrawals and the tax-free transfer applies to your required amount. A QCD made after you’ve already pulled your full RMD is still a valid QCD, but it won’t retroactively undo the taxes on that earlier withdrawal. A QCD that exceeds this year’s RMD also doesn’t carry forward to next year’s requirement — each year stands on its own.
Two Traps That Reduce the Benefit
The first is the post-70½ contribution offset. If you made deductible contributions to a traditional IRA after turning 70½, the excludable portion of your QCD is reduced dollar for dollar by the running total of those contributions. The offset is cumulative and doesn’t reset each year.4Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 408 Individual Retirement Accounts Contribute a deductible $7,000 at age 71, then make a $20,000 QCD in a later year, and only $13,000 of it is excluded from income; the remaining $7,000 is taxable. Nondeductible contributions and Roth contributions don’t trigger this reduction.
The second is the no-double-benefit rule. You cannot also claim an itemized charitable deduction on Schedule A for the same dollars you excluded from income as a QCD.4Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 408 Individual Retirement Accounts If you make both a QCD and a separate cash gift to charity in the same year, the cash portion can still be deducted (if you itemize), but keep the QCD portion off Schedule A.
Reporting the QCD on Your Return
Your custodian sends Form 1099-R after year-end showing the full distribution in Box 1. Custodians now use Code Y in combination with another distribution code to flag a transfer as a QCD.6Internal Revenue Service. 2025 Instructions for Forms 1099-R and 5498
On Form 1040, report the total IRA distribution on line 4a. If the whole amount was a QCD, put zero on line 4b as the taxable amount. If only part of the distribution was a QCD, put the non-QCD portion on line 4b. Then check box 2 on line 4c to signal that a QCD is included.7Internal Revenue Service. 2025 Instructions for Form 1040
Records to Keep
Get a written acknowledgment from the charity for each QCD. It must confirm the date and amount and state that you received no goods or services in return. Without it, the IRS can deny the tax-free treatment.
Hold the acknowledgment along with the Form 1099-R and your copy of the distribution request. If you sent QCDs to more than one charity during the year, you need a separate acknowledgment from each. Keep the records for at least three years after filing the return that reports the QCD, since that is the standard window for an IRS examination.