RMD for Inherited IRA: 10-Year Rule, Taxes, and Penalties

An RMD for an inherited IRA is the minimum amount you must withdraw each year, or by a final deadline, from a retirement account you inherited. What you owe and when depends on three things: your relationship to the person who died, whether they had already reached the age at which their own required minimum distributions began, and when they died. For most non-spouse heirs of someone who died after 2019, the account must be emptied within 10 years, and annual withdrawals along the way are required if the original owner had already started their own RMDs.¹

The Year-of-Death RMD Comes First

Before anything else, check whether the original owner owed an RMD for the year they died. If they were already required to take annual distributions and hadn’t finished taking that year’s amount before dying, the beneficiary has to take the remainder. The deadline is December 31 of the year of death, and this applies to every type of beneficiary.¹

The amount is calculated using the deceased owner’s information: their age and the account balance as of the prior December 31. If they had already taken the full year’s RMD, nothing more is owed for that year. Missing this withdrawal triggers the same penalty as missing any other RMD.

Why the “Required Beginning Date” Keeps Coming Up

The required beginning date, or RBD, is the date by which the original owner had to start their own withdrawals. Under current law that’s April 1 of the year after the owner turns 73.² Starting in 2033 the starting age rises to 75.

Whether the owner died before or after reaching that date changes what you owe. Die before, and the rules for beneficiaries are more flexible. Die on or after, and beneficiaries often face mandatory annual withdrawals on top of any final depletion deadline.

If You Inherited From a Spouse

Surviving spouses have the widest set of choices. A spouse can roll the inherited IRA into their own IRA or elect to treat it as their own. Once that happens, the account follows the normal retirement rules and the spouse doesn’t need to take anything out until reaching their own RMD age. This is usually the strongest move for a younger spouse who doesn’t need the money soon, because tax-deferred growth continues.³

A spouse can also keep the account as an inherited IRA. That option matters most for spouses under 59½ who need access to the money, because withdrawals from an inherited IRA aren’t hit with the 10% early withdrawal penalty that would otherwise apply.⁴

When a spouse keeps the account as inherited and the owner died before their RBD, the spouse can delay withdrawals until the year the deceased owner would have reached RMD age. When the owner died on or after their RBD, the spouse takes annual distributions based on their own life expectancy, recalculated each year from the IRS Single Life Expectancy Table.³

The 10-Year Rule for Non-Spouse Beneficiaries

If you’re an individual who inherited from someone other than a spouse, and the owner died after December 31, 2019, the entire account must be gone by December 31 of the tenth year after the year of death. If the owner died in March 2025, the account must be at zero by December 31, 2035.³

What you’re required to do inside those ten years splits along the RBD line.

Owner Died Before Their RBD

You have full flexibility. Take nothing for nine years and everything in year ten, take equal annual amounts, take irregular withdrawals; any pattern works as long as the balance hits zero by the end of year ten.³

Owner Died On or After Their RBD

You must take annual withdrawals in years one through nine, using the Single Life Expectancy Table based on your own age, and still empty whatever remains by the end of year ten.¹

This annual-withdrawal requirement caused years of confusion. The IRS waived the penalty for missed annual withdrawals in 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024. That relief ended after 2024, and the final regulations apply starting January 1, 2025, so if this describes your situation you have to take the annual amount going forward.⁵

Beneficiaries Who Escape the 10-Year Rule

Five categories of individuals qualify as “eligible designated beneficiaries” and can spread withdrawals over their own life expectancy instead of squeezing everything into ten years:³

A surviving spouse, who also has the separate option to treat the IRA as their own.
A minor biological or adopted child of the account owner, but only until age 21. Grandchildren and other minor relatives don’t qualify.
A disabled individual meeting the IRS definition of disability.
A chronically ill individual certified by a licensed health care practitioner.
Someone not more than 10 years younger than the deceased owner, such as a sibling close in age.

Eligible designated beneficiaries using the life-expectancy method take annual distributions from the Single Life Expectancy Table starting in the year after the owner’s death. One catch: when the owner died on or after their RBD, eligible designated beneficiaries must use the life-expectancy method and cannot elect the 10-year rule instead.³

The minor-child exception expires. Once the child turns 21, whatever remains in the inherited IRA becomes subject to the 10-year rule from that point, giving the child until age 31 to fully deplete the account.

Inherited Roth IRAs

Roth IRAs follow the same timelines: non-spouse beneficiaries get the 10-year rule, and eligible designated beneficiaries get the life-expectancy option. The tax treatment is different, and so is one structural point that helps beneficiaries.³

Because Roth owners are never required to take lifetime RMDs, a Roth owner is always treated as having died before their RBD. Non-spouse beneficiaries under the 10-year rule therefore never owe annual withdrawals in years one through nine. The account can grow tax-free for the full ten years and come out at the end.

Withdrawals of contributions from an inherited Roth are always tax-free. Withdrawals of earnings are tax-free as long as the Roth had been open at least five years at the time of the original owner’s death. If the account is less than five years old, the earnings portion may be subject to income tax.³

Estates, Charities, and Non-Qualifying Trusts

When an IRA passes to an estate, a charity, or a trust that doesn’t qualify as a “see-through” trust, the SECURE Act changes don’t apply. The timeline still depends on the RBD.³

If the owner died before their RBD, the five-year rule applies: the account must be empty by December 31 of the fifth year following the year of death, with no interim withdrawals required. If the owner died on or after their RBD, the beneficiary takes annual distributions based on the deceased owner’s remaining life expectancy.³

How to Calculate the Annual Amount

The math sits in the IRS life-expectancy tables in Publication 590-B. Non-spouse beneficiaries use Table I, the Single Life Expectancy Table. Find your age as of December 31 of the year following the owner’s death, look up the corresponding factor, and divide the prior year-end account balance by that factor. In each following year, reduce the original factor by one.⁶

Spousal beneficiaries who keep the account as an inherited IRA get a better deal: they can recalculate life expectancy each year using their current age, rather than reducing a fixed factor by one. The result is smaller required withdrawals because the divisor doesn’t shrink as fast.¹

For beneficiaries under the 10-year rule who owe annual distributions, the calculation works the same way in years one through nine. Whatever is in the account at the end of year nine has to come out entirely in year ten.

Taxes on What You Withdraw

Distributions from an inherited traditional IRA are included in your gross income for the year you receive them and taxed at your ordinary income rate.³ That’s why the timing of voluntary withdrawals matters. If you’re subject to the 10-year rule with no annual requirement, taking the full balance in a single tax year could push you into a much higher bracket. Spreading withdrawals across several years often produces a lower total tax bill even though nothing forces you to do it that way.

Some states also tax inherited IRA distributions as income, and a handful of states impose separate inheritance taxes that may reach retirement assets passing to non-spouse heirs. State rules vary.

What Happens If You Miss an RMD

The excise tax for failing to take a required distribution is 25% of the shortfall. On a $20,000 missed RMD, that’s a $5,000 penalty.⁷

The penalty drops to 10% if you correct the mistake within the correction window, which generally runs through the end of the second tax year after the year you missed the distribution. Miss a 2026 RMD, and you’d typically have until the end of 2028 to take the missed amount and qualify for the reduced rate.⁷

Requesting a Waiver

The IRS can waive the penalty entirely if the shortfall was due to reasonable cause and you’re taking steps to fix it. Medical emergencies, custodian errors, and incorrect life-expectancy calculations have all worked as reasonable-cause explanations. To request the waiver, file IRS Form 5329 with your tax return. Report the required amount and the amount actually distributed, then write “RC” next to the shortfall line along with the dollar figure you’re asking to have waived.⁸

Take the missed distribution as soon as you spot the error, then file Form 5329 asking for the waiver. Filing proactively with a reasonable explanation is far more likely to succeed than waiting for the IRS to send a notice.

1
Internal Revenue Service. Required Minimum Distributions for IRA Beneficiaries
2
Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Plan and IRA Required Minimum Distributions FAQs
3
Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Topics – Beneficiary
4
Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Topics – Exceptions to Tax on Early Distributions
5
Internal Revenue Service. IRS Notice 2024-35 – Certain Required Minimum Distributions for 2024
6
Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Topics – Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs)
7
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 4974 – Excise Tax on Certain Accumulations in Qualified Retirement Plans
8
Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Form 5329 (2025)