Required Minimum Distributions: Rules, Ages, and Deadlines

Required minimum distributions are annual withdrawals the IRS forces you to take from most tax-deferred retirement accounts once you reach age 73 or 75, depending on your birth year. Each withdrawal is taxed as ordinary income, and skipping one triggers a 25% excise tax on the amount you should have taken. The figure you owe each year comes from dividing your prior December 31 account balance by a life expectancy factor from an IRS table, so it changes every year as you age and your balance moves.¹

Which Accounts Are Subject to RMDs

Traditional IRAs are the account type most people associate with the rule.² SEP IRAs and SIMPLE IRAs follow the same framework because they are structured as traditional IRA variants. On the workplace side, 401(k), 403(b), and governmental 457(b) plans all require annual withdrawals once you hit the trigger age, whether the money came from your contributions or your employer’s match.³

Roth IRAs are the exception. Federal law exempts Roth IRA owners from any distributions during their lifetime.⁴ Roth 401(k) and Roth 403(b) accounts used to require distributions even though they were funded with after-tax money, but SECURE 2.0 eliminated that requirement starting in 2024, so original owners of those accounts no longer need to withdraw during life.⁵

When RMDs Begin Based on Your Birth Year

Your starting age depends entirely on when you were born:³

Born before July 1, 1949: RMDs started at 70½ under the old rules.
Born July 1, 1949 through December 31, 1950: RMDs started at 72.
Born 1951 through 1959: RMDs begin at 73. A statutory drafting issue left 1959 ambiguous, but IRS regulations confirmed age 73 applies.⁵
Born 1960 or later: RMDs begin at 75.

How to Calculate Your RMD

Take your account balance as of December 31 of the prior year and divide by a life expectancy factor from the IRS tables in Publication 590-B.¹ The result is your minimum for the year. You can always withdraw more; you cannot withdraw less.

Most owners use the Uniform Lifetime Table, which assumes a beneficiary roughly ten years younger and produces a smaller annual withdrawal. You switch to the Joint Life and Last Survivor Expectancy Table only if your sole beneficiary is a spouse more than ten years younger, in which case your RMD is smaller still.

A worked example: you turn 75 in 2026 and your traditional IRA held $500,000 on December 31, 2025. The Uniform Lifetime Table factor for age 75 is 24.6.⁶ Divide $500,000 by 24.6 and your RMD is roughly $20,325. At age 80, the factor drops to 20.2, so the same balance would require about $24,752. The factor shrinks each year, which means the required percentage climbs as you age even if your balance stays flat.

Recalculate every year. Pull your December 31 statement, look up your new age on the table, and divide. Most custodians will do this for you and send a notice, but the legal responsibility is yours.

Deadlines and the First-Year Trap

Your first RMD is due by April 1 of the year after you reach your trigger age. The IRS calls this the Required Beginning Date. Every RMD after that is due by December 31.⁷

That April 1 grace period is a trap. If you turn 73 in 2026 and delay your first RMD until March 2027, you still owe a second RMD by December 31, 2027. Two full RMDs land in the same tax year, which can push you into a higher bracket, increase the taxable share of your Social Security, and spike your Medicare premiums.³ Taking your first distribution by December 31 of the trigger year avoids the pileup.

Still Working Past Your RMD Age

If you are still employed past your RMD age and participate in your current employer’s plan, you can delay distributions from that specific plan until you actually retire.³ The exception does not apply if you own more than 5% of the company. It also does not help with IRAs or old 401(k)s from previous employers, which follow the normal schedule regardless of your employment status.

Handling Multiple Retirement Accounts

If you have several accounts, aggregation rules decide whether you can consolidate withdrawals.

Multiple IRAs: calculate the RMD for each IRA separately, then pull the combined total from whichever IRA or IRAs you choose.³
Multiple 403(b) accounts: same treatment as IRAs. Calculate separately, withdraw from any one or more.⁸
401(k) and 457(b) plans: no aggregation. Each plan’s RMD must come out of that specific plan.⁸

You cannot cross account types. An IRA’s RMD cannot be satisfied by extra withdrawals from a 401(k), and vice versa. People with accounts spread across former employers sometimes overlook a plan and trigger penalties without realizing it. A year-end list of every account and its individual RMD amount prevents that.

How RMDs Affect Your Tax Bill

Every dollar you withdraw from a traditional account is taxed as ordinary income at your marginal rate.³ For many retirees, the RMD is the single largest driver of the year’s tax liability. If you made nondeductible contributions to a traditional IRA, a portion of each distribution is a tax-free return of basis, but that requires careful tracking on Form 8606.

Social Security

RMD income feeds the formula that determines how much of your Social Security is taxable. The IRS adds your modified adjusted gross income to half your benefits to produce “provisional income.” Above $25,000 for a single filer or $32,000 for joint filers, up to 50% of your benefits become taxable. Above $34,000 or $44,000 respectively, up to 85% becomes taxable.⁹ Those thresholds have never been indexed for inflation. A large RMD can push you across both levels at once.

Medicare IRMAA Surcharges

Medicare Part B and Part D premiums are also income-sensitive. Above certain thresholds you pay an Income-Related Monthly Adjustment Amount on top of the standard premium. For 2026, single filers with income above $109,000 and joint filers above $218,000 start paying surcharges, and at the highest bracket the Part B surcharge alone reaches $487 per month per person.¹⁰ IRMAA is based on your return from two years earlier, so a spike in 2026 RMD income raises your premiums in 2028. The first-year double-distribution trap is especially painful here.

Using Qualified Charitable Distributions

If you are 70½ or older and charitably inclined, a qualified charitable distribution lets you transfer money directly from your IRA to a qualifying charity. The amount counts toward your RMD for the year but is excluded from your taxable income entirely.³ That matters because the money never appears on your return, so it does not inflate provisional income for Social Security purposes or push you toward higher IRMAA tiers.

The QCD limit is set at $100,000 per person in the statute, with an inflation adjustment starting in 2024.¹¹ For 2026 the adjusted limit is $111,000 per person, or $222,000 for a married couple where both spouses qualify. The funds must move directly from the IRA custodian to the charity. If you withdraw first and write a check yourself, it does not qualify. A QCD in excess of your current-year RMD does not carry forward.

The Penalty for Missing an RMD

The excise tax for a missed distribution is 25% of the shortfall. If your RMD was $20,000 and you took nothing, you owe $5,000 in penalty on top of the income tax due when you eventually withdraw the money.¹² Before SECURE 2.0 the rate was 50%.

Catch it quickly and the penalty drops to 10%. To qualify, you have to withdraw the missed amount and file a corrected return within a correction window that ends at the earliest of an IRS notice of deficiency, an IRS assessment, or the last day of the second tax year after the year you missed the RMD.¹² In practice that gives you roughly two years, but acting quickly is safer.

You report the penalty and request any waiver on IRS Form 5329.¹³ If the shortfall came from a reasonable error and you are taking steps to fix it, the IRS has authority to waive the tax entirely. Custodian processing errors, serious illness, and reliance on incorrect advice from a financial institution are common grounds. Attach a written explanation to Form 5329, enter “RC” and the shortfall amount on the dotted line beside the relevant line, and pay any remaining tax due.

Inherited Accounts Follow Different Rules

If you inherited a retirement account, the rules above are not the whole story. For deaths in 2020 or later, most non-spouse beneficiaries must empty the inherited account by the end of the tenth year following the owner’s death.¹⁴ Roth IRAs, which do not require distributions during the owner’s lifetime, do require distributions from beneficiaries.

A narrow group of “eligible designated beneficiaries” can still use the life expectancy method: surviving spouses, minor children of the account owner (until they reach the age of majority, when the 10-year clock starts), disabled or chronically ill individuals, and beneficiaries no more than ten years younger than the deceased owner. Eligible beneficiaries use the Single Life Expectancy Table, which typically produces larger annual withdrawals than the Uniform Lifetime Table.¹⁵ The 25% excise tax for under-distribution applies to beneficiaries the same as to original owners.

1
Internal Revenue Service. Publication 590-B – Distributions from Individual Retirement Arrangements (IRAs)
2
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 U.S. Code 408 – Individual Retirement Accounts
3
Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Plan and IRA Required Minimum Distributions FAQs
4
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 408A – Roth Individual Retirement Accounts
5
Congress.gov. Required Minimum Distribution (RMD) Rules for Original Owners
6
Internal Revenue Service. Publication 590-B
7
Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Topics – Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs)
8
Internal Revenue Service. RMD Comparison Chart (IRAs vs. Defined Contribution Plans)
9
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 86 – Social Security and Tier 1 Railroad Retirement Benefits
10
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. 2026 Medicare Parts A and B Premiums and Deductibles
11
Legal Information Institute. 26 USC 408(d)(8) – Qualified Charitable Distributions
12
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 4974 – Excise Tax on Certain Accumulations in Qualified Retirement Plans
13
Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Form 5329
14
Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Topics – Beneficiary
15
Internal Revenue Service. Required Minimum Distributions for IRA Beneficiaries