What Is the Age Gap Rule for Inherited IRAs?

The age gap rule for inherited IRAs lets you stretch withdrawals over your own life expectancy, instead of draining the account within ten years, if you are not more than ten years younger than the person who died. It comes from the SECURE Act of 2019, which carved out a handful of “eligible designated beneficiaries” from the ten-year depletion requirement that now applies to most inherited retirement accounts. For a sibling, a close friend, or an unmarried partner near the deceased owner’s age, qualifying under this rule can mean decades of additional tax-deferred (or tax-free) growth.

How the Ten-Year Age Gap Is Measured

The statute says “not more than 10 years younger.” Read literally: someone exactly ten years younger still qualifies. Nine years younger qualifies. Eleven years younger does not. A beneficiary older than the deceased always qualifies, because they are zero years younger.¹

The comparison is made once, on the date the owner dies, and it is fixed from that point forward. Nothing that happens afterward changes your classification.

A concrete example. Your brother was born in 1950 and you were born in 1959. If he dies in 2026, the gap is nine years, and you qualify for the stretch. A friend of his born in 1961, inheriting from the same person, has an eleven-year gap and does not qualify. That friend falls under the ten-year rule instead.

The age gap is one of five eligible designated beneficiary categories in Internal Revenue Code Section 401(a)(9)(E)(ii). The others are surviving spouses, the owner’s own minor children, disabled individuals, and chronically ill individuals. Anyone who fits none of the five is a regular designated beneficiary and must follow the ten-year rule.²

What the Stretch Actually Looks Like

Qualifying beneficiaries take annual required minimum distributions based on their own single life expectancy. You use IRS Table I in Appendix B of Publication 590-B, look up your age in the year after the owner’s death, and divide the account balance by the corresponding factor. Each year after that, you subtract one from the factor and divide again.

A 65-year-old beneficiary, for example, finds a factor of roughly 23.7 in Table I. First-year distribution: about 1/23.7 of the balance. Next year: 1/22.7. And so on down the table.¹

The first annual distribution generally must come out by December 31 of the year following the owner’s death. You can always withdraw more than the minimum. Withdrawing less costs you a penalty.

How the Owner’s Age at Death Shapes Your Options

Whether the deceased owner had already reached their required beginning date (RBD) changes what an eligible designated beneficiary can do.

Owner Died Before the Required Beginning Date

You can choose between the life expectancy stretch and the ten-year rule. Most people take the stretch to keep the balance compounding, but the ten-year option is available if front-loaded withdrawals fit your tax picture better.³

Owner Died On or After the Required Beginning Date

The ten-year alternative goes away. You take annual distributions based on the longer of your own life expectancy or the deceased owner’s remaining life expectancy.³

Current RBD Ages

Under SECURE 2.0, owners born between 1951 and 1959 start distributions in the year they turn 73. Owners born after 1959 start in the year they turn 75. The formal RBD is April 1 of the year after they hit that age. An owner who died before reaching that age died before their RBD.⁴

Roth Inherited IRAs Follow the Same Age Rule

The age gap test works identically for Roth inherited IRAs. What differs is the tax on withdrawals.

Qualified distributions from an inherited Roth are entirely tax-free, provided the five-year holding period starting from the owner’s first Roth contribution has passed. If the owner had held the Roth for at least five years before death, every dollar you take out is tax-free, earnings included. If not, the earnings portion may be taxable, though contributions always come out tax-free.¹

One structural quirk helps Roth beneficiaries. Roth owners have no lifetime RMDs, so a Roth owner is always treated as having died before their RBD. Every option that depends on pre-RBD status is on the table.⁴

Distributions from a traditional inherited IRA, by contrast, are taxed as ordinary income in the year received, aside from any portion representing after-tax contributions the owner made.¹

If the Age Gap Doesn’t Apply

An eleven-year-or-more younger beneficiary who doesn’t fit any of the other four eligible categories has to empty the account by December 31 of the tenth year after the owner’s death. There is no grace period.

What catches people: if the owner died on or after their RBD, the beneficiary also has to take annual minimum distributions during years one through nine, calculated from Table I, while still emptying the account by year ten. If the owner died before their RBD, there are no annual requirements inside the ten-year window; the beneficiary can time withdrawals however they want, as long as the balance is zero after year ten.⁴

The difference matters for tax planning. Someone free of annual requirements can bunch withdrawals into low-income years. Someone locked into annual RMDs has less room to maneuver.

The Stretch Doesn’t Pass to Your Own Heirs

If you qualify under the age gap rule, start stretching, and then die before the account is emptied, whoever inherits from you does not continue the stretch. The successor beneficiary has to empty the remaining balance within ten years of your death. The clock resets on your death, not the original owner’s.³

This trips up estate planning. Naming a much younger contingent beneficiary on a stretched inherited IRA does not give that person a life expectancy payout. They get ten years.

Penalty for Missing a Required Distribution

Failing to take the full RMD in any year triggers a 25% excise tax on the shortfall. Miss an $8,000 distribution and you owe $2,000 on top of the eventual income tax.⁴

SECURE 2.0 lowered the rate to 10% if you fix the shortfall within two years by withdrawing the missed amount and filing Form 5329 for the year you missed it. The IRS can also waive the penalty entirely for a reasonable error you’ve moved to correct; you attach a written explanation to Form 5329 and enter “RC” on the dotted line next to the penalty amount.⁵

Getting the Account Coded Correctly

The inherited IRA must sit in a separate account titled in the deceased owner’s name for your benefit. Only a surviving spouse can roll inherited funds into their own IRA. Commingling inherited money with your personal retirement money destroys the tax treatment.

The custodian typically needs:

An official death certificate from the local registrar.
Your name, Social Security number, and date of birth, along with the deceased owner’s account information.
The custodian’s beneficiary claim form, usually with a section certifying your relationship and relative age.

Birth dates carry real weight here. A clerical error that makes you look eleven years younger instead of nine can cause the custodian to default you into the ten-year rule rather than recognizing you as an eligible designated beneficiary. Check the dates against official documents before you submit anything, and get written confirmation of your EDB status once the account is open.

1
Internal Revenue Service. Publication 590-B, Distributions from Individual Retirement Arrangements (IRAs)
2
Cornell Law Institute. 26 USC 401(a)(9) – Eligible Designated Beneficiary Definition
3
Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Topics – Beneficiary
4
Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Plan and IRA Required Minimum Distributions FAQs
5
Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Form 5329 – Additional Taxes on Qualified Plans (Including IRAs) and Other Tax-Favored Accounts