IRA Required Minimum Distributions: Rules, Deadlines, and Penalties

If you own a traditional IRA, the IRA required minimum distribution rules force you to start pulling money out each year once you reach age 73, with that starting age moving to 75 in 2033. Your required minimum distribution (RMD) equals your December 31 balance from the prior year divided by a life expectancy factor the IRS publishes, and failing to take the full amount by the deadline triggers a 25% excise tax on whatever you left in the account.¹

Which IRAs Require Distributions

Traditional IRAs, SEP IRAs, and SIMPLE IRAs all require RMDs during the owner’s lifetime. Any account that gave you a tax deduction on the way in has to start releasing taxable income at some point, and that point is age 73 under current law.¹

Roth IRAs are the exception. If you’re the original owner of a Roth IRA, you never have to take a distribution during your lifetime.² The money can sit and grow for as long as you live.

Inherited IRAs follow a separate set of distribution rules that apply even to inherited Roths. Those rules turn on who you are to the deceased owner and when the owner died, and they’re addressed briefly at the end of this article.

When You Have to Start

The starting age has moved several times, so the rule that applies to you depends on when you were born:

If you reached age 70½ before January 1, 2020, you started under the old 70½ rule and continue on schedule.
If you turned 72 between 2020 and 2022, you started at 72 under the original SECURE Act.
If you turn 73 in 2023 or later, you start at 73 under SECURE Act 2.0.
Beginning in 2033, the starting age moves to 75.

Anyone already on the clock stays on the clock. The 2033 bump to 75 only helps people who haven’t yet hit the current threshold.³

How to Calculate the Amount

The math is simple. Take the account balance as of December 31 of the prior year, then divide by the life expectancy factor the IRS assigns to your age. You run this calculation separately for each IRA you own.⁴

Almost everyone uses the Uniform Lifetime Table in Publication 590-B. There’s one exception: if your sole beneficiary is a spouse more than ten years younger than you, you use the Joint and Last Survivor Table instead, which gives you a bigger divisor and a smaller required withdrawal.¹

A Worked Example

Suppose you’re 73 with $500,000 in your traditional IRA on December 31 of last year. The Uniform Lifetime Table divisor for age 73 is 26.5. Divide $500,000 by 26.5 and your RMD is $18,868. At age 75 the divisor drops to 24.6, so the same $500,000 balance would produce an RMD of $20,325. The divisor shrinks each year, which means required withdrawals climb even when the account balance holds steady.⁴

You can take more than the minimum in any year, but the extra doesn’t count toward next year’s requirement. Each year stands on its own.¹

Deadlines and the First-Year Trap

Every regular RMD is due by December 31 of the year it covers. The first RMD gets a special extension: it can be delayed until April 1 of the year after you reach the applicable age. Turn 73 in 2026 and your first RMD is due April 1, 2027.¹

That extension has a cost. If you push your first RMD into the following April, your second RMD is still due December 31 of that same year. Two distributions arrive as taxable income in one tax year. The stacking can lift you into a higher bracket, raise Medicare premium surcharges, and increase the share of your Social Security benefits subject to tax. Most people avoid the pileup by taking the first RMD in the year they actually turn 73.

If You Own More Than One IRA

Calculate the RMD for each traditional IRA separately, then add the amounts together. You can withdraw the combined total from any one IRA, from several, or from all of them in any proportion you like. There’s no requirement to pull a slice from each account.⁵

This aggregation flexibility is IRA-specific. You cannot use an IRA distribution to satisfy an RMD owed from a 401(k) or a 457(b), and you cannot go the other direction either.

How RMDs Are Taxed

An RMD from a traditional IRA is ordinary income in the year you receive it. If every contribution you ever made was deductible, the entire withdrawal is taxable.⁶

If you ever made nondeductible contributions (after-tax dollars into a traditional IRA), you have basis in the account and part of each distribution comes out tax-free. The IRS applies a pro-rata calculation across all your traditional IRAs to figure the taxable share; you cannot isolate your basis in one account and pull only from there.

Using Qualified Charitable Distributions

A qualified charitable distribution (QCD) sends money directly from your IRA to a qualifying charity and keeps the amount off your taxable income. In 2026, the QCD cap is $111,000 per person, so a married couple with separate IRAs can each direct up to $111,000.⁷

You become eligible for QCDs at age 70½, which is earlier than the age 73 RMD start. Charitable transfers made in that gap shrink the balance and reduce future RMDs.⁸ Once RMDs begin, a QCD can satisfy some or all of the year’s required amount.

Two mechanics matter. First, the funds must go directly from the IRA custodian to the charity; if the check comes to you first, it’s a regular taxable distribution. Second, QCDs come only from IRAs, not from 401(k)s or other employer plans, and they cannot go to donor-advised funds or private foundations.

Penalty for a Missed or Short Distribution

If you don’t take the full RMD by the deadline, the IRS imposes an excise tax of 25% on the shortfall. The penalty drops to 10% if you fix the shortfall inside the correction window, which runs through the earlier of the date the IRS assesses the tax or the last day of the second tax year beginning after the year of the missed distribution. Miss a 2026 RMD, take the money out and file the corrected return before the end of 2028, and the reduced 10% rate should apply.⁹

Report the tax on IRS Form 5329, filed with the tax return for the year the RMD was due.¹

Asking the IRS to Waive the Penalty

The IRS can waive the excise tax if the shortfall came from a reasonable error and you’ve corrected it. Attach a letter of explanation to Form 5329 describing what happened and what you did to fix it. Enter “RC” and the shortfall amount on the dotted line next to the applicable line on the form, and calculate the tax as if the waiver were granted.¹⁰

The IRS reviews each request and notifies you if the waiver is denied. Custodian processing errors, illness that interfered with account management, and reliance on incorrect professional advice are common grounds. Waivers are granted fairly regularly when the mistake is genuine and promptly corrected.

A Note on Inherited IRAs

The rules above cover the account you own. If you inherited an IRA, a different framework applies. For account owners who died after December 31, 2019, most non-spouse beneficiaries must empty the inherited account by the end of the tenth year after the year of death, and if the original owner had already begun RMDs, annual distributions are required inside that ten-year window.¹¹ The IRS waived the missed-annual-distribution penalty for 2021 through 2024 while finalizing the regulations, and standard 25% enforcement resumed in 2025.¹² Surviving spouses, minor children of the owner, disabled or chronically ill individuals, and beneficiaries not more than ten years younger than the owner qualify for life-expectancy treatment instead.¹

1
Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Plan and IRA Required Minimum Distributions FAQs
2
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 408A – Roth IRAs
3
Fidelity. SECURE 2.0 – Rethinking Retirement Savings – Section: Big Changes to RMDs
4
Internal Revenue Service. Publication 590-B – Distributions from Individual Retirement Arrangements (IRAs) – Section: Figuring the Owners Required Minimum Distribution
5
Internal Revenue Service. RMD Comparison Chart (IRAs vs. Defined Contribution Plans)
6
Internal Revenue Service. Publication 590-B – Distributions from Individual Retirement Arrangements (IRAs) – Section: Distributions Fully or Partly Taxable
7
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 408 – Individual Retirement Accounts
8
Internal Revenue Service. Publication 590-B – Distributions from Individual Retirement Arrangements (IRAs) – Section: Qualified Charitable Distributions
9
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 4974 – Excise Tax on Certain Accumulations in Qualified Retirement Plans
10
Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Form 5329
11
Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Topics – Beneficiary
12
Internal Revenue Service. Notice 2024-35 – Certain Required Minimum Distributions for 2024