Required Minimum Distributions: Deadlines, Taxes, and Penalties

Required minimum distributions are the yearly withdrawals the IRS forces you to take from most tax-deferred retirement accounts once you reach a set age, currently 73 for most account holders. The amount is set by your prior year’s ending balance divided by an IRS life expectancy factor, the withdrawal is taxed as ordinary income, and the penalty for taking too little is 25% of the shortfall.

Which Accounts the Rules Cover

The requirement applies to traditional IRAs, SEP IRAs, and SIMPLE IRAs, along with employer plans including 401(k)s, 403(b)s, and governmental 457(b) plans.¹ The connecting thread is tax deferral: contributions or earnings escaped tax on the way in, and the government eventually wants that revenue.

Roth IRAs are the exception. If you’re the original owner, no lifetime withdrawals are required, because those contributions were already taxed. Inherited Roth IRAs do carry distribution rules for beneficiaries, though the withdrawals themselves stay tax-free.²

If you hold more than one traditional IRA, you calculate the required amount separately for each, but you can pull the entire combined total from a single IRA of your choice.³ Workplace plans don’t get that flexibility. Each 401(k) or 403(b) must satisfy its own requirement on its own.

When You Have to Start

Your birth year sets the starting age:

Born before July 1, 1949: withdrawals began at 70½.
Born July 1, 1949 through 1950: 72, under the SECURE Act.
Born 1951 through 1959: 73, under SECURE 2.0.
Born 1960 or later: 75, starting in 2033.

The law sets a hard first deadline called the required beginning date: April 1 of the year after the year you reach the required age.² Every year after that, the deadline is December 31.

The Still-Working Delay

If you’re still employed and participating in your current employer’s retirement plan, you can hold off distributions from that plan until the year you actually retire.² Two limits matter. The delay is gone if you own 5% or more of the sponsoring business. And it covers only the plan at your current job. IRAs and plans left behind at prior employers still run on the normal schedule. Some people roll older 401(k) balances into their current plan to extend the delay, but you’d need to confirm your current plan accepts incoming rollovers.

How to Calculate the Amount

Take your account balance on December 31 of last year. Divide it by a life expectancy factor from an IRS table. That’s your required withdrawal for the year.

Most people use the Uniform Lifetime Table in IRS Publication 590-B. Look up your age for the current year, find the factor, divide. If your spouse is your sole beneficiary and more than ten years younger than you, use the Joint and Last Survivor Table instead, which stretches the withdrawal over a longer joint life expectancy and produces a smaller number.

A worked example: your balance was $100,000 on December 31 and you turn 73 this year. The Uniform Lifetime Table factor at 73 is 26.5. Divide and you owe about $3,774. At 74 the factor drops to 25.5, and next year’s balance will be different, so you run the math again. The required percentage of your balance climbs each year as the factor shrinks.

Keep the year-end statement you used and note the table and factor. Your custodian reports the withdrawal on Form 1099-R, and the taxable portion lands on your Form 1040.

How the Withdrawals Are Taxed

Withdrawals from traditional IRAs and other tax-deferred accounts go into your gross income for the year you take them.⁴ They’re taxed at ordinary income rates, not capital gains rates. Stacked on top of a pension, Social Security, and investment income, the added amount can move you into a higher bracket.

You can have the custodian withhold federal and state tax before sending the money. Filing Form W-4P with the plan administrator sets the withholding.⁵ Without enough withholding, you may need estimated tax payments to avoid an underpayment penalty.

The First-Year Trap

That April 1 first-year deadline looks like a gift. It isn’t. If you push the first withdrawal into the following calendar year, you’ll owe two withdrawals in that year: the delayed first one, plus the current year’s regular one, both due by December 31.²

If you turn 73 in 2025, the first withdrawal is due by April 1, 2026, and the 2026 withdrawal is due by December 31, 2026. Both land on your 2026 return. Doubling up can push you into a higher bracket, raise the taxable share of your Social Security benefits, and lift your Medicare premiums the following year. Taking the first withdrawal in the year you actually hit the required age is usually the better call.

Penalties for Coming Up Short

Withdraw less than the required amount and you owe an excise tax of 25% on the shortfall.⁶ On a $10,000 miss, that’s $2,500 in penalty on top of the ordinary income tax you’ll still owe when the money comes out.

The rate drops to 10% if you correct the error inside a correction window. That window runs from the date the tax is imposed until the earlier of the date the IRS sends a notice of deficiency, assesses the tax, or the last day of the second tax year after the year the penalty was triggered.⁷ In practice, that generally gives you about two years to take the missed amount and file an amended return.

If the miss was a genuine mistake, you can ask the IRS to waive the penalty entirely by filing Form 5329 with a written explanation of what went wrong and how you fixed it.⁸ The IRS grants these waivers with some regularity when the facts show reasonable cause, such as a custodian error, a death in the family, or a serious illness. Take the missed withdrawal as soon as you spot the problem, then file. Getting there before the IRS notices makes a real difference.

Qualified Charitable Distributions

If you’re at least 70½ and you give to charity, you can send money straight from your traditional IRA to a qualified charity and keep that amount out of your taxable income. This is a qualified charitable distribution. The 2026 exclusion cap is $111,000.⁹

The custodian has to send the funds directly to the charity. If the money passes through your account first, it doesn’t count. Donor-advised funds and private foundations don’t qualify as recipients.⁴ The distribution has to come from a traditional IRA, not a SEP or SIMPLE IRA.

The tax advantage matters: a qualified charitable distribution can satisfy your annual withdrawal requirement while staying out of your adjusted gross income. Lower AGI can cut the taxable share of Social Security benefits, reduce Medicare Part B and D premiums, and keep you under thresholds for other tax breaks. If you’re already giving to charity, routing the gifts through your IRA is usually the more tax-efficient path.

Inherited Accounts Work Differently

If you inherited a retirement account, the rules above don’t map cleanly onto your situation. A surviving spouse can roll the account into their own IRA and treat it as their own. Most other beneficiaries who inherited from someone who died in 2020 or later have to empty the account by the end of the tenth year after the year of death, and if the original owner had already reached their required beginning date, annual withdrawals during that ten-year window are required as well, per final IRS regulations effective January 1, 2025.¹⁰ A narrow group of eligible designated beneficiaries — surviving spouses, minor children of the owner, disabled or chronically ill beneficiaries, and anyone not more than ten years younger than the owner — can still stretch withdrawals over their own life expectancy.¹¹

1
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 401 – Qualified Pension, Profit-Sharing, and Stock Bonus Plans
2
Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Plan and IRA Required Minimum Distributions FAQs
3
Internal Revenue Service. RMD Comparison Chart (IRAs vs. Defined Contribution Plans)
4
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 408 – Individual Retirement Accounts
5
Internal Revenue Service. About Form W-4P, Withholding Certificate for Periodic Pension or Annuity Payments
6
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 4974 – Excise Tax on Certain Accumulations in Qualified Retirement Plans
7
eCFR. 26 CFR 54.4974-1 – Excise Tax on Accumulations in Qualified Retirement Plans
8
Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Form 5329
9
Internal Revenue Service. 2026 Amounts Relating to Retirement Plans and IRAs, as Adjusted for Changes in Cost-of-Living (Notice 2025-67)
10
Federal Register. Required Minimum Distributions
11
Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Topics – Beneficiary