How to Donate Directly From Your IRA to Charity

To donate directly from your IRA to charity, you ask your IRA custodian to send money straight from your account to a qualifying public charity. The transfer is called a qualified charitable distribution, or QCD. If you’re at least 70½ on the day the money leaves the account, up to $111,000 in 2026 is excluded from your gross income, even if you take the standard deduction.¹

Who Can Make a QCD

You have to be 70½ on the actual date of the distribution, not the age you’ll hit by year-end.² That’s earlier than the age when required minimum distributions begin (73 for most retirees), so you can start giving this way several years before RMDs apply.

The account has to be the right kind of IRA. Eligible accounts are:

Traditional IRAs
Rollover IRAs
Inherited IRAs
Inactive SEP IRAs
Inactive SIMPLE IRAs

A SEP or SIMPLE IRA is inactive if your employer hasn’t contributed to it for the plan year ending within your tax year.³ Employer plans like 401(k)s, 403(b)s, 457s, and active SEP or SIMPLE IRAs don’t qualify. You can roll money from an employer plan into a traditional IRA first, but the rollover itself isn’t a QCD.

Roth IRAs technically qualify. There’s almost never a reason to use one, since Roth distributions are already tax-free in most cases.

How Much You Can Give

The 2026 cap is $111,000 per person, adjusted annually for inflation in $1,000 increments.¹ The limit is per person, not per account.

Married couples who each own IRAs can each exclude $111,000, for a combined $222,000. Both spouses have to independently meet the 70½ requirement, and each distribution has to come from that spouse’s own IRA. You can’t direct money from your spouse’s account.

Anything you transfer above the cap is treated as a regular taxable distribution. You could claim it as a charitable deduction on Schedule A, but only if you itemize.

Which Charities Qualify

The recipient must be a public charity eligible for tax-deductible contributions under Section 170(b)(1)(A) of the tax code.² That covers most places people typically give: churches and religious organizations, hospitals, universities, and other publicly supported nonprofits.

Three categories of tax-exempt organizations are specifically excluded:

Donor-advised funds. If you direct a QCD to a DAF, the entire amount becomes taxable.
Most private non-operating foundations.
Supporting organizations classified under Section 509(a)(3).

The gift has to be a true gift with nothing coming back to you. If the charity gives you event tickets, merchandise, a membership, or any other benefit, the distribution fails as a QCD.⁴ Even a thank-you dinner can disqualify the whole amount. Confirm with the charity in advance that no benefit is attached.

Making the Transfer

Call your IRA custodian — your brokerage, bank, or fund company — and request a qualified charitable distribution. You’ll give them the dollar amount and the charity’s full legal name. Most custodians have a dedicated QCD request form, and some let you start the request online.

The custodian will do one of two things. Either they’ll send the money electronically from your IRA to the charity’s bank account, or they’ll cut a check drawn on your IRA and made payable to the charity. If it’s a check, you can hand-deliver or mail it yourself. What matters is that the payee line names the charity, not you.

The single rule you cannot break: the money cannot pass through your personal bank account. If you withdraw from your IRA into your own checking account and then write a personal check to the charity, the full amount is a taxable distribution regardless of intent.² There’s no fix after the fact. The statute requires a direct transfer from the IRA trustee to the charity.

The December 31 Deadline

A QCD counts for the tax year in which the charity actually receives the funds. The deadline is December 31, with no extensions.⁵ Custodians often need a week or more to process a request, and mailed checks need time to arrive. Start the process by early December at the latest.

If you’re using the QCD to cover an RMD, don’t cut it close. A check mailed December 27 that arrives January 3 counts for the next year, which leaves the current year’s RMD unsatisfied and exposes you to a penalty.

How It Interacts With Your RMD

If you’re 73 or older and subject to RMDs, a QCD counts toward your required distribution for the year.⁵ You can use it to cover all or part of the RMD, and the QCD portion stays out of your taxable income. If your RMD is $30,000 and you plan to give $15,000 to charity, routing that gift as a QCD cuts the taxable half of your RMD.

A QCD above this year’s RMD does not carry forward. Each year’s RMD is calculated separately, so you can’t bank a large QCD now and apply the surplus to next year’s requirement.⁵

Reporting the QCD on Your Return

Your custodian reports the full distribution on Form 1099-R, with the gross amount in Box 1. For the 2025 tax year and after, custodians add a new Distribution Code Y in Box 7 alongside the standard code (Code 7 for a normal IRA distribution, Code 4 for an inherited IRA) to flag the amount as a QCD.⁶ If your custodian hasn’t updated systems, you may only see Code 7. That doesn’t invalidate the QCD; you just handle the identification on your return.

On Form 1040, enter the full Box 1 amount on Line 4a. On Line 4b, enter the taxable portion. If the entire distribution was a QCD, Line 4b is $0. Write “QCD” next to Line 4b to explain the gap between the two numbers.⁵ If only part of the distribution was a QCD, Line 4b shows the remaining taxable amount, with “QCD” still noted beside it.

Pitfalls That Can Shrink or Kill the Exclusion

Deductible IRA Contributions Made After 70½

This one trips people up. If you took a deduction for IRA contributions made after turning 70½, the IRS reduces your QCD exclusion dollar-for-dollar by the total of those contributions.² The reduction is cumulative. A deductible $7,000 contribution at 71 and another at 72 would reduce your QCD exclusion by $14,000 the first year you make a QCD, dropping the cap from $111,000 to $97,000 that year. The reduction carries forward until QCDs fully absorb it. Nondeductible contributions don’t trigger the rule.

IRAs With After-Tax Basis

If you’ve made nondeductible contributions, normal distributions are split between taxable and nontaxable dollars using a pro-rata calculation. QCDs get a favorable exception: QCD dollars come out of the taxable portion of your IRA first.² That drains the pretax money and leaves a higher share of after-tax basis behind for future withdrawals.

The One-Time Life Income Gift

Under SECURE 2.0, you have a once-per-lifetime option to direct up to $55,000 from your IRA to a charitable remainder trust or a charitable gift annuity.¹ Instead of the charity receiving everything up front, the arrangement pays you (and optionally your spouse) income for life, with the remainder going to charity at the end.

The requirements are strict:³

You can only do it once in your lifetime.
Only you and your spouse can be named as income recipients.
Payments must begin within one year of funding.
A charitable gift annuity has to pay at least 5% annually.
The trust or annuity cannot accept any other assets alongside the QCD funds.
Payment rights are non-assignable; you cannot give them back to the charity.
All income you receive from the arrangement is taxed as ordinary income.

The $55,000 counts against your overall $111,000 limit for the year. If you fund a $55,000 charitable gift annuity, you can still make up to $56,000 in standard QCDs to other charities that same year.

Documentation to Keep

Get a written acknowledgment from every charity. The IRS requires written documentation for any charitable contribution of $250 or more, and the acknowledgment has to include:⁷

The charity’s name
The dollar amount received
A statement that no goods or services were provided in return (or a description and good-faith value estimate if any were)

Keep the acknowledgment with your 1099-R and the custodian’s confirmation of the transfer. If the IRS asks about the gap between Lines 4a and 4b on your return, those three documents are what you’ll use to substantiate the exclusion.

1
Internal Revenue Service. 2026 Amounts Relating to Retirement Plans and IRAs, as Adjusted for Changes in Cost-of-Living
2
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 408 – Individual Retirement Accounts
3
Internal Revenue Service. Publication 526 (2025), Charitable Contributions
4
Internal Revenue Service. Charitable Contributions: Quid Pro Quo Contributions
5
Internal Revenue Service. Publication 590-B (2025), Distributions from Individual Retirement Arrangements (IRAs)
6
Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Forms 1099-R and 5498
7
Internal Revenue Service. Charitable Contributions: Written Acknowledgments