An IRA has no maturity date. An Individual Retirement Arrangement is a tax-advantaged account, not an investment product like a certificate of deposit or a bond, so nothing about the account itself expires on a set calendar day. What people usually mean when they ask about an IRA maturity date is either a CD or bond held inside the IRA that has its own term, or one of the age-based deadlines in the tax code that control when you can take money out, when you must, and how much.
Those deadlines are the ones that actually matter, and they’re worth knowing cold.
What Actually Matures Is the Investment, Not the IRA
A CD you buy inside your IRA might run three years or five. A bond has a defined date when the issuer returns your principal. When one of those investments matures, the cash lands in your IRA’s settlement account. The money stays inside the IRA’s tax shelter, and nothing is taxed.
From there you choose what to do next: buy another CD, move into a bond fund, shift to stocks or mutual funds, or leave the cash where it sits. The IRA keeps running regardless of what any single holding inside it does.
Age 59½: When Withdrawals Stop Costing Extra
The first age that affects your IRA is 59½. Before you reach it, money pulled from a Traditional IRA gets hit with a 10% additional tax on top of the regular income tax owed on the distribution.1Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Topics – Exceptions to Tax on Early Distributions Once you hit 59½, that 10% penalty goes away. You can take out any amount, for any reason, and only owe the ordinary income tax.
A handful of exceptions let you avoid the penalty earlier, including disability, certain medical expenses, and up to $10,000 toward a first-time home purchase. For most people, though, 59½ is the practical dividing line between expensive early withdrawals and free access.2Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Plans FAQs Regarding IRAs Distributions (Withdrawals)
Age 73: When Withdrawals Become Required
The second age that matters is when you have to start taking money out whether you want to or not. For Traditional, SEP, and SIMPLE IRAs, the IRS requires annual Required Minimum Distributions starting at age 73.3Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Plan and IRA Required Minimum Distributions FAQs That threshold applies to anyone who turns 72 after December 31, 2022, and turns 73 before January 1, 2033.4Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 401 – Qualified Pension, Profit-Sharing, and Stock Bonus Plans The RMD age rises again to 75 for anyone who turns 74 after December 31, 2032, so if you’re still decades from retirement, your deadline sits further out than today’s rule suggests.
The logic is simple. The government gave you a tax break on the way in and now wants its share on the way out.
Your First RMD Deadline and the April 1 Trap
Your first RMD is due by April 1 of the year after you reach the trigger age.5Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Topics – Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs) That grace period sounds helpful, and it creates a trap. If you push your first distribution into the following calendar year, you still owe a second RMD for that same year by December 31. Two distributions in one tax year can push you into a higher bracket. Most people are better off taking the first RMD in the year they actually turn the trigger age.
Every RMD after the first is due by December 31 of its own year.
How the Required Amount Is Figured
Your RMD is your total Traditional IRA balance on December 31 of the prior year, divided by a life expectancy factor from IRS tables.6Internal Revenue Service. Publication 590-B – Distributions from Individual Retirement Arrangements (IRAs) Most owners use the Uniform Lifetime Table (Table III). If your sole beneficiary is a spouse more than ten years younger, you use the Joint and Last Survivor Table (Table II), which gives a smaller required distribution.
If you own more than one Traditional IRA, you calculate each one’s RMD separately, then add them up and withdraw the total from whichever IRA you want.7Internal Revenue Service. RMD Comparison Chart (IRAs vs. Defined Contribution Plans) That flexibility lets you pull from whichever account makes the most sense.
Roth IRAs: No RMDs, but Watch the Five-Year Rule
Roth IRAs don’t follow the RMD rules. You’re never required to take distributions from a Roth during your lifetime, no matter how old you get.5Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Topics – Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs) Because the contributions were already taxed, the government has nothing more to collect. The account can keep growing tax-free for your entire life.
The timing rule that does apply to a Roth is the five-year rule. To pull earnings out completely tax-free, two things must both be true: you’re at least 59½, and the account has been open for at least five tax years. The clock starts on January 1 of the tax year of your first Roth contribution. Open your first Roth with a 2024 contribution and the five-year period runs from January 1, 2024 through December 31, 2028. After that, and once you’re past 59½, every dollar comes out tax-free and penalty-free.
A separate five-year clock runs for Roth conversions. Each conversion starts its own clock on January 1 of the conversion year. Withdrawing converted principal before that period ends, and before 59½, can trigger the 10% early withdrawal penalty. Once you reach 59½ the penalty no longer applies, whether or not the conversion’s five years have run.
Contribution and Rollover Windows
Two other deadlines get confused with “maturity.” Both are about money going in rather than coming out.
You can contribute to an IRA for a given tax year from January 1 of that year through the tax-filing deadline of the following year, typically April 15.8Internal Revenue Service. Publication 590-A – Contributions to Individual Retirement Arrangements (IRAs) Filing a tax extension does not extend the IRA contribution deadline. For 2026, the limit is $7,500, or $8,600 if you’re 50 or older.9Internal Revenue Service. 401(k) Limit Increases to $24,500 for 2026, IRA Limit Increases to $7,500
The 60-Day Rollover Clock
If you take a distribution from one IRA and plan to roll it into another, you have 60 days from the date you receive the funds to complete the deposit. Miss that window and the distribution counts as a taxable withdrawal, with the 10% early withdrawal penalty on top if you’re under 59½. You’re also limited to one indirect IRA-to-IRA rollover per 12-month period across all your IRAs combined.10Internal Revenue Service. Rollovers of Retirement Plan and IRA Distributions
That one-per-year limit does not apply to trustee-to-trustee transfers, where the money moves directly between institutions without passing through your hands, or to Roth conversions.10Internal Revenue Service. Rollovers of Retirement Plan and IRA Distributions When possible, a direct trustee-to-trustee transfer is the safer path. It avoids both the 60-day clock and the one-rollover limit.
Inherited IRAs Come with Their Own Deadlines
If you inherit an IRA, the rules shift completely. Most non-spouse beneficiaries who inherit after 2019 must empty the entire account by December 31 of the tenth year after the year of the owner’s death.11Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Topics – Beneficiary That 10-year rule applies to both inherited Traditional and inherited Roth IRAs.
If the original owner had already reached their required beginning date, the beneficiary also has to take annual distributions during years one through nine, with whatever’s left due by the end of year ten. If the owner died before reaching that age, no annual distributions are required inside the 10-year window, but the account still has to be emptied by the deadline. And if the owner died in a year they owed an RMD but hadn’t yet taken it, the beneficiary has to complete that final distribution.
A narrow group, called eligible designated beneficiaries, can stretch distributions over their own life expectancy instead. That group includes a surviving spouse, a minor child of the deceased, a disabled or chronically ill individual, and anyone not more than ten years younger than the original owner. Surviving spouses have the most flexibility of all; they can roll the inherited account into their own IRA and effectively reset the clock.
What Missing a Deadline Costs
Failing to take your full RMD by the deadline carries an excise tax of 25% of the shortfall, meaning the difference between what you should have withdrawn and what you actually took.12Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 4974 – Excise Tax on Certain Accumulations in Qualified Retirement Plans On a $20,000 RMD you forgot entirely, that’s $5,000 in excise tax before you count the income tax on the distribution itself.
The penalty drops to 10% if you fix the mistake within what the statute calls the correction window. That window runs from the date the penalty is imposed until the earlier of: the IRS mailing you a notice of deficiency, the IRS assessing the tax, or the last day of the second tax year after the year you missed the distribution.12Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 4974 – Excise Tax on Certain Accumulations in Qualified Retirement Plans Catch the error quickly, take the missed distribution, file the right form, and you pay the reduced rate. Wait for the IRS to notice and a manageable mistake becomes an expensive one.
The same structure applies to inherited IRAs. Missing the 10-year deadline or skipping a required annual distribution inside the 10-year window exposes the beneficiary to the same 25% excise tax on the amount that should have come out.5Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Topics – Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs)