When Do I Have to Start Withdrawing From My IRA?

You generally have to start withdrawing from a traditional IRA in the year you turn 73. Your first required minimum distribution, or RMD, is due by April 1 of the year after you turn 73, and every distribution after that is due by December 31. The rule was changed by the SECURE 2.0 Act in December 2022, which raised the starting age from 72 to 73 and set another increase to 75 beginning in 2033.¹² Miss the deadline and you owe a 25 percent federal excise tax on the amount you should have taken out.³

The Starting Age Depends on the Year You Turned 72

If you had not yet turned 72 by the end of 2022, your RMDs begin at 73. If you turned 72 in 2022 or earlier, your RMDs had already started and you continue on the original schedule.¹ Starting January 1, 2033, the age moves up again to 75.²

The age trigger applies whether or not you need the money. Once you hit it, the IRS wants tax on the pre-tax dollars sitting in the account, and it sets a minimum you must pull out each year for the rest of your life.

Which of Your Retirement Accounts Are Covered

RMDs apply to traditional IRAs, SEP IRAs, SIMPLE IRAs, and most employer-sponsored plans including 401(k)s, 403(b)s, and 457(b) plans.⁴ All of these hold money that has never been taxed.

Roth IRAs are exempt from RMDs during the owner’s lifetime, and designated Roth accounts inside employer plans, such as a Roth 401(k) or Roth 403(b), are also exempt.⁴ Contributions to those accounts were made with after-tax dollars, so the government does not force you to draw them down while you are alive. Beneficiaries who inherit a Roth account are a different story, and distribution rules apply to them after the owner’s death.

Your First Deadline vs. Every Deadline After

Your first RMD is due by April 1 of the year after you turn 73. This date is called the required beginning date. For every year after that, the deadline is December 31.⁵

Waiting until April 1 for that first withdrawal has a catch. Your first distribution (for the year you turned 73) is due by April 1, and your second distribution (for the current year) is still due by December 31 of that same year. Both land on one tax return, which can push you into a higher bracket.⁴ Taking the first RMD by December 31 of the year you turn 73, instead of waiting until the following April, avoids the double-up.⁵

How Much You Have to Withdraw

Your RMD for a given year equals your account balance on December 31 of the prior year, divided by a life-expectancy factor from the IRS Uniform Lifetime Table. Most account owners use that table. The exception: if your sole beneficiary is a spouse more than 10 years younger, you use the Joint Life and Last Survivor Expectancy Table, which produces a smaller required withdrawal.⁵

A simple example. Say you turn 73 in 2026 and your traditional IRA balance on December 31, 2025, was $500,000. The Uniform Lifetime Table factor at age 73 is 26.5, so your RMD is about $18,868. At age 75, the factor drops to 24.6, and the same balance would require roughly $20,325.⁶ The required percentage rises each year.

If You Have More Than One IRA

You must calculate the RMD for each traditional IRA separately (including SEP and SIMPLE IRAs), but you can pull the combined total from just one of them or split it any way you want.⁴ The same aggregation rule applies across 403(b) contracts.

Employer plans such as 401(k)s and 457(b)s don’t get this flexibility. Each plan’s RMD has to come out of that specific plan account, and you cannot use an IRA withdrawal to satisfy an employer-plan RMD or vice versa.⁴

The Penalty for Missing an RMD

The federal excise tax on a missed or short RMD is 25 percent of the amount you failed to withdraw. That rate used to be 50 percent before SECURE 2.0 cut it. It falls further to 10 percent if you correct the shortfall (take the missed distribution and file a corrected return) before the end of the second year after the year you missed it.³

Asking the IRS to Waive the Penalty

If you missed an RMD for a reason beyond your control, such as a serious illness, a custodian error, or a genuine misunderstanding of the rules, you can ask the IRS to waive the excise tax. File Form 5329, attach a written explanation of what happened, and show that you have already taken steps to fix the shortfall. Enter “RC” (for reasonable cause) on the dotted line next to line 54a or 54b along with the amount you want waived. The IRS reviews each request individually and will notify you if the waiver is denied.⁷

How to Actually Take the Money Out

You request an RMD through your IRA custodian, usually by logging into an online portal and asking for a one-time distribution or by submitting a distribution form. You choose how much federal income tax to withhold. The default is 10 percent of the gross amount, but you can elect any rate from 0 to 100 percent by filing Form W-4R with your custodian.⁸ Some states also require state income tax withholding, generally in a range of about 3 to 8 percent depending on where you live.

Cash usually hits a linked bank account within a few business days. After the distribution, your custodian issues Form 1099-R showing the gross amount, the taxable portion, and any federal tax withheld. You use that form when you file.⁹

Taking Investments Out Instead of Cash

You don’t have to sell holdings to satisfy an RMD. An in-kind distribution moves stocks, mutual funds, or other securities from the IRA into a taxable brokerage account without liquidating them. The fair market value of the shares on the transfer date counts toward your RMD, and you owe income tax on that value just as if you had received cash. Your cost basis resets to the market value at the time of the transfer, which matters when you later sell in the taxable account.

Prices can move during the transfer. If the final value ends up below your required amount, you’ll need to transfer more assets or add cash to close the gap.

Sending the Distribution to Charity

If you’re 70½ or older, you can send up to $111,000 in 2026 directly from your IRA to a qualified charity. This is a qualified charitable distribution (QCD), and the amount counts toward your RMD without being included in your taxable income.¹⁰ The transfer has to go straight from the custodian to the charity. If the money passes through your hands first, it doesn’t qualify.

On your return, enter the full distribution on the IRA distributions line of Form 1040, put zero on the taxable amount line, and write “QCD” next to it.¹¹ Because the QCD stays out of your adjusted gross income, it can also help hold down Medicare premium surcharges tied to income.

How an RMD Can Raise Your Medicare Premiums

RMD income flows into your modified adjusted gross income (MAGI), and Medicare uses your MAGI from two years earlier to set your Part B and Part D premiums. Above certain thresholds, you pay an Income-Related Monthly Adjustment Amount on top of the standard premium.

For 2026, single filers pay no surcharge if their MAGI is $109,000 or less. Married couples filing jointly have a $218,000 threshold. Above those levels, surcharges rise in tiers, and at the top tier the combined Part B and Part D surcharges reach $487.00 and $91.00 per month respectively.¹² A large RMD, or doubling up in your first year, can push you across a threshold and cost you two years later. Spreading withdrawals over multiple years, converting to Roth before RMDs start, or using QCDs can keep MAGI under a trigger.

If You Inherited the IRA

Different rules apply if the account came to you from someone who died after 2019. Most non-spouse beneficiaries must empty the entire account by the end of the tenth year after the year of death.¹³ There is no annual RMD under this 10-year rule, but no balance can remain after year ten.

Certain “eligible designated beneficiaries” can instead stretch distributions over their own life expectancy: surviving spouses; minor children of the deceased owner (until they reach the age of majority, after which the 10-year clock starts); disabled or chronically ill individuals; and beneficiaries no more than 10 years younger than the deceased owner.¹³

A surviving spouse has the most options. You can roll the inherited IRA into your own IRA, in which case RMDs follow your own age and the standard Uniform Lifetime Table, potentially delaying withdrawals for years if you’re under 73. Or you can keep it as an inherited IRA and take distributions based on your own life expectancy. The 10-year deadline does not apply to surviving spouses.⁴

Inherited Roth IRAs follow the same distribution timelines as inherited traditional IRAs. The original owner wasn’t required to take RMDs, but beneficiaries must use either the 10-year rule or the life-expectancy method depending on their category.¹³

1
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2
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