There is no single deadline by which an IRA must be completely distributed during the owner’s lifetime. A Traditional IRA owner only has to take annual Required Minimum Distributions starting at age 73 (or 75 for people who turn 74 after December 31, 2032), and a Roth IRA owner has no lifetime withdrawal requirement at all.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 401 – Qualified Pension, Profit-Sharing, and Stock Bonus Plans The hard deadline to empty an IRA arrives after death: most non-spouse beneficiaries must drain the account by December 31 of the 10th year following the owner’s death, while a narrower set of heirs gets five years, a lifetime stretch, or (for a surviving spouse) the ability to reset the clock entirely.
The Owner’s Account: Annual Withdrawals, No Depletion Deadline
A Traditional IRA owner is never required to fully empty the account. The obligation is only to take an annual Required Minimum Distribution calculated by dividing the prior December 31 balance by a life expectancy factor from the IRS Uniform Lifetime Table.2Internal Revenue Service. Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs) The divisor shrinks each year, so the percentage you must withdraw grows, but a balance can remain in the account for the rest of the owner’s life.
Roth IRA owners have no Required Beginning Date and no lifetime RMDs. The account can grow untouched for as long as the owner lives.3eCFR. 26 CFR 1.408A-6 – Distributions
The 10-Year Rule for Most Inherited IRAs
For most people who inherit an IRA from someone who died after December 31, 2019, the account must be completely distributed by December 31 of the 10th year following the original owner’s death.4Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Topics – Beneficiary This replaced the old “stretch” approach that let beneficiaries spread withdrawals across their own life expectancies, and it now applies to adult children, grandchildren, siblings, friends, and most other named individual beneficiaries.
The deadline is a true depletion deadline. Whatever remains in the inherited IRA at the end of year 10 must come out. How you reach zero inside those 10 years, however, depends on whether the original owner had already started taking their own RMDs.
Owner Died Before Reaching RMD Age
If the account owner died before their Required Beginning Date, you have full flexibility during the 10 years. You can take nothing in years one through nine and withdraw the entire balance in year 10, spread withdrawals evenly, or use any combination you prefer. The only enforced date is December 31 of the 10th year.4Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Topics – Beneficiary
Owner Died On or After RMD Age
When the owner was already taking RMDs at death, you must take annual distributions in years one through nine of the 10-year window, calculated using your own life expectancy, and still empty whatever remains by the end of year 10.5Federal Register. Required Minimum Distributions Letting the account sit for a decade and taking a lump sum is not an option in this scenario.
The IRS proposed this annual-RMD requirement in 2022 but did not finalize it until July 2024, with an effective date of January 1, 2025. During the interim, the IRS waived penalties for beneficiaries who skipped annual distributions for 2021 through 2024.6Internal Revenue Service. Notice 2024-35 – Certain Required Minimum Distributions for 2024 That grace period is over. Starting with 2025, annual RMDs inside the 10-year window are enforced.
One easy-to-miss obligation: if the owner died in a year in which they had not yet taken their own RMD, that year-of-death RMD still has to come out, and the responsibility shifts to the beneficiary.2Internal Revenue Service. Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs)
Who Gets Longer Than 10 Years
A narrow group of heirs, called Eligible Designated Beneficiaries, can still stretch distributions over their own life expectancy rather than cramming them into a decade. The categories are:
- A surviving spouse.
- A minor child of the deceased owner (biological or legally adopted, not grandchildren or stepchildren). The stretch lasts until the child turns 21, at which point the 10-year clock begins.
- A disabled individual, meaning someone unable to engage in substantial gainful activity due to an impairment expected to result in death or last indefinitely.
- A chronically ill individual who needs help with at least two activities of daily living or requires substantial supervision due to cognitive impairment.
- Any individual not more than 10 years younger than the deceased owner.
Disability and chronic illness are determined as of the account owner’s date of death. Someone who becomes disabled later does not retroactively qualify.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 401 – Qualified Pension, Profit-Sharing, and Stock Bonus Plans
Surviving Spouse Options
A surviving spouse has the most flexibility of any beneficiary. The strongest option is to treat the inherited IRA as your own, either by retitling it or rolling it into an IRA you already own. That resets the RMD schedule to your own age and can delay required withdrawals for years if you are younger than the deceased.4Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Topics – Beneficiary Done this way, no depletion deadline applies at all; the account becomes yours, subject only to your own future RMDs.
If the original owner died before reaching the Required Beginning Date, a spouse who keeps the account as an inherited IRA can stretch distributions over their own life expectancy or delay withdrawals entirely until the year the deceased owner would have reached RMD age.4Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Topics – Beneficiary If the owner died on or after the Required Beginning Date, the spouse can still roll the account into their own IRA; if they choose to remain a beneficiary, they begin annual distributions based on their own life expectancy.7Internal Revenue Service. Required Minimum Distributions for IRA Beneficiaries
When the Deadline Is Only Five Years
If an IRA passes to an entity rather than an individual, such as an estate, a charity, or a trust that does not qualify as a “see-through” trust, the beneficiary is classified as a Non-Designated Beneficiary and faces a shorter timeline.
If the owner died before reaching RMD age, the entire account must be distributed within five years of the owner’s death. No annual withdrawals are required in the interim, but the account has to be empty by the end of the fifth year.4Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Topics – Beneficiary
If the owner died on or after the Required Beginning Date, the account is distributed over the deceased owner’s remaining statistical life expectancy, with annual withdrawals required. The factor comes from the IRS Single Life Table using the owner’s age at death, reduced by one for each subsequent year.7Internal Revenue Service. Required Minimum Distributions for IRA Beneficiaries
When the Beneficiary Dies Before Emptying the Account
A successor beneficiary does not get a fresh 10-year window. They inherit whatever time remained on the original beneficiary’s clock. If the first beneficiary was in year four of a 10-year depletion period, the successor has six years left. The deadline stays anchored to the original owner’s date of death.
If the original beneficiary was an Eligible Designated Beneficiary using the life-expectancy stretch, the successor loses the stretch and switches to a 10-year rule measured from the original beneficiary’s death.
Roth IRAs Follow the Same Post-Death Deadlines
The tax-free growth of a Roth IRA ends at inheritance. Beneficiaries of inherited Roth IRAs are subject to the same depletion timing as inherited Traditional IRAs: the 10-year rule for most designated beneficiaries, the Eligible Designated Beneficiary stretch for the narrow categories above, and the five-year rule for non-designated beneficiaries.4Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Topics – Beneficiary The withdrawals themselves are tax-free when the five-year holding period has been met, but missing the depletion deadline still triggers the excise tax regardless.
Because Roth owners have no Required Beginning Date, an inherited Roth IRA is always treated as if the owner died before the RBD. Designated beneficiaries therefore never owe annual RMDs inside the 10-year window. They just need to zero out the account by December 31 of year 10.8Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Plan and IRA Required Minimum Distributions FAQs
What Missing the Deadline Costs
The excise tax for failing to distribute an IRA on time is 25% of the shortfall, meaning the difference between what should have come out and what actually did.9Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 4974 – Excise Tax on Certain Accumulations in Qualified Retirement Plans On a $20,000 miss, the penalty is $5,000 before any income tax on the eventual withdrawal.
The rate drops to 10% if you correct the mistake within the “correction window,” which runs from the date the tax arises until the earliest of an IRS deficiency notice, an IRS assessment, or the end of the second tax year after the year the penalty arose.9Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 4974 – Excise Tax on Certain Accumulations in Qualified Retirement Plans To get the reduced rate, you need to withdraw the missed amount and file a return reflecting the corrected tax inside that window.
If the miss resulted from a genuine error, the IRS can waive the penalty entirely. The waiver is requested by filing Form 5329, entering “RC” (reasonable cause) on the relevant line, and attaching a statement describing what went wrong and how you fixed it.10Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Form 5329 Waivers are granted fairly often when the taxpayer promptly withdrew the missed amount after discovering the problem.
One procedural detail matters even when no penalty is owed. Failing to file Form 5329 extends the IRS’s lookback period for the excise tax from three years to six. Filing a “zero” Form 5329 for each year an IRA is subject to RMDs is the only way to keep the shorter window.