Required Minimum Distribution (RMD)

Reviewed 12 August 2026 · Sourced from 26 U.S.C. § 401(a)(9), the Treasury regulations and IRS Publication 590-B

What a required minimum distribution actually is

A woman turns 73 in March. The following January an envelope arrives from the company that holds her IRA. It says she is required to withdraw $7,924.53 this year, and that if she does not, the IRS will penalize the part she failed to take.

She was not planning to withdraw anything. She lives on Social Security and twenty-two hours a week at a job she likes, and the IRA is the one thing she has managed not to touch. Nothing in the letter explains why the federal government has an opinion about that.

A required minimum distribution is that amount. It is the smallest sum you are legally required to take out of a traditional retirement account in a given year, once you reach a starting age fixed by the year you were born. The rule is 26 U.S.C. § 401(a)(9); the version written for humans is IRS Publication 590-B.

That is the honest frame. Every dollar that went into a traditional 401(k), 403(b) or IRA went in without being taxed, and the government's half of the arrangement was that it would collect eventually. Without a deadline the account would pass to heirs, then to theirs, and the tax would drift across generations untouched. Section 401(a)(9) stops the drift.

Two points defuse most of the panic. An RMD is not a tax. It is a forced withdrawal, and you owe ordinary income tax on it at your own rate, exactly as on any other withdrawal from that account. And it does not force you to spend the money — only to take it out of the tax shelter. What the rule really costs you is the choice of when the taxable event happens.

When yours starts, and the two deadlines

Nothing to elect, no form to file. The starting age — the regulations call it your applicable age — falls out of your date of birth. It has moved twice in six years, which is why much of what you will read is out of date.

Those cohorts are set out in 26 CFR § 1.401(a)(9)-2(b)(2).

The 1959 problem, described accurately

The SECURE 2.0 Act wrote the new ages into § 401(a)(9)(C)(v) as two clauses. One sets the age at 73 for anyone who “attains age 72 after December 31, 2022, and age 73 before January 1, 2033.” The other sets it at 75 for anyone who “attains age 74 after December 31, 2032.” Somebody born in 1959 turns 73 in 2032 and 74 in 2033, satisfying both. The statute gives that one birth year two answers.

The two deadlines

Your first distribution is not due in the year you reach your applicable age but by April 1 of the following year — what the code calls your required beginning date. Every distribution after the first is due by December 31 of its own year.

That April 1 is where the money gets lost. Delaying the first distribution does not skip a year — it moves it into the same tax year as the second, so two land on one return.

How the number is set

The calculation is one division. There are only two inputs.

The balance is a snapshot, not an average — the closing value on the last day of the prior year, usually on a December statement. The IRS states the rule the same way: the RMD is “the account balance as of the end of the immediately preceding calendar year divided by a distribution period from the IRS's ‘Uniform Lifetime Table.’”

Three tables, and which one is yours

All three are in 26 CFR § 1.401(a)(9)-9 and reprinted in Appendix B of Publication 590-B.

• Table III, the Uniform Lifetime Table. The one for almost everybody taking distributions from their own account during their own life.
• Table II, the Joint Life and Last Survivor Table. Used instead in one narrow case: your sole beneficiary is your spouse and that spouse is more than ten years younger than you. It gives a larger factor, so a smaller required distribution.
• Table I, the Single Life Table. For beneficiaries taking distributions from an account they inherited — not for original owners.

One point of housekeeping: these tables were rewritten by final regulations published November 12, 2020, effective for distribution calendar years beginning on or after January 1, 2022. They get called the 2022 tables for that reason, but the regulation is a 2020 document, and the July 2024 final regulations left them alone. If a calculator hands you a factor of 25.6 at age 73 rather than 26.5, it is on the pre-2022 table and it is wrong.

What the factor means in percentage terms

Factors from 26 CFR § 1.401(a)(9)-9(c), in force since 2022; the percentages and dollar column are our own arithmetic, holding the balance at $210,000 as an illustration. A real balance moves every year.

Notice the shape. The required percentage climbs every year for the rest of your life, because the factor is a life expectancy and life expectancy shortens. Somewhere in the eighties it usually passes what a person wants to spend. That is by design.

Worked example: the April 1 trap in dollars

Back to the woman with the letter. She is single, turns 73 in 2026, and her traditional IRA closed 2025 at $210,000. To keep the arithmetic visible, assume the account earns nothing over the two years and she takes nothing beyond what is required. Her age-73 factor is 26.5.

Path A: she takes it in December 2026

She withdraws $7,924.53 in 2026, so the account closes 2026 at $202,075.47. Her age-74 factor is 25.5.

• 2026 taxable IRA income: $7,924.53
• 2027 RMD: $202,075.47 ÷ 25.5 = $7,924.53, due December 31, 2027
• Two-year total distributed: $15,849.06

The two matching is a quirk of the flat balance, not a rule.

Path B: she uses the April 1 grace

She takes nothing in 2026, so the account still closes 2026 at $210,000.

• 2026 taxable IRA income: $0
• 2026 RMD, taken March 2027: $7,924.53
• 2027 RMD: $210,000 ÷ 25.5 = $8,235.29, due December 31, 2027
• 2027 taxable IRA income: $7,924.53 + $8,235.29 = $16,159.82

Her 2027 requirement is also $310.76 larger under Path B, because the balance it was calculated on had never been reduced.

What the doubling costs at the margin

Suppose her other income leaves her with $40,000 of taxable income before any IRA money. For a single filer in 2026 the 12% bracket runs to $50,400 and the 22% bracket starts above it (IRS inflation adjustments for 2026; these move every year, so check the current ones).

The bracket cost is $5,759.82 taxed at 22% instead of 12%: $575.98, our own calculation from the 2026 single-filer bands. It is worse than it looks, because Path B also left $10,400 of 12% bracket room unused in 2026, and that room does not roll over. A doubled year can additionally pull more of a Social Security benefit into taxable income and cross a Medicare surcharge tier, billed two years later — the retirement withdrawal guide covers both.

The April 1 grace is legal, and it occasionally wins — if the year you turn your applicable age is unusually high-income and the next is not. It is just never the default, and most people who use it do so by accident.

Which accounts have them, and the aggregation rule

RMDs attach to accounts holding money that has not been taxed yet. That is the whole logic, and it explains every entry in the table.

The Roth rows are the two most misquoted lines in the subject. A Roth IRA has never had a lifetime required distribution for its original owner. Designated Roth accounts inside an employer plan did, through 2023, until SECURE 2.0 added § 402A(d)(5), which exempts them for taxable years beginning after December 31, 2023. Both exemptions end at death: beneficiaries of Roth accounts do face distribution rules.

The still-working exception

If you are past your applicable age, still employed, and the plan document allows it, you can put off distributions from that employer's plan until the year you retire. Two limits: it does not apply if you own 5% or more of the sponsoring business, and it does not exist for IRAs — the IRS puts it plainly: IRA owners “must begin taking RMDs once the account holder is age 73, even if they're retired.”

The aggregation rule, which costs real money

This is the most expensive misunderstanding on the page, and it is purely a paperwork problem.

• IRAs pool. The IRS: an IRA owner “must calculate the RMD separately for each IRA they own but can withdraw the total amount from one or more of the IRAs.” Three IRAs, one withdrawal; multiple 403(b) contracts pool the same way.
• 401(k) and 457(b) plans do not pool. The IRS again: RMDs from those plans “must be taken separately from each of those plan accounts.”
• Nothing crosses the line. An IRA withdrawal cannot satisfy a 401(k) requirement, or the reverse, however large it is.

What happens if you miss one

The penalty used to be brutal and is now merely bad. Before 2023 it was 50% of whatever you failed to withdraw — one of the harshest in the code, and it landed mostly on the confused.

SECURE 2.0 cut it. 26 U.S.C. § 4974(a) now imposes “a tax equal to 25 percent of the amount by which such minimum required distribution exceeds the actual amount distributed.” Subsection (e) drops that to 10 percent if the shortfall is corrected inside the correction window.

How long the window actually is

The statute runs it from the date the tax is imposed to the earliest of three events: the IRS mails a notice of deficiency, the IRS assesses the tax, or “the last day of the second taxable year that begins after the end of the taxable year in which the tax under subsection (a) is imposed.”

In practice: miss a 2026 distribution and the outer edge of the window is December 31, 2028. Two full years — unless the IRS finds it first, because the moment it assesses the tax or mails a deficiency notice the window shuts and the rate returns to 25%. The cheap version of this mistake is the one you catch yourself.

Correcting it

Take the missed amount out now, as a separate withdrawal on top of the current year's requirement, then report the shortfall on Form 5329. The IRS's instruction is to file it “with their federal tax return for the year in which the full amount of the RMD was required, but not taken” — the missed year, not the year you noticed.

And one thing worth saying plainly, because the fear of it keeps people from fixing the problem: the tax applies only to the amount you failed to distribute, not to the account. Missing a $7,900 distribution is a $1,975 exposure at 25%, and $790 at 10%. It is not a threat to the balance.

Ways the bill gets smaller

You cannot opt out. You can change how much sits in the accounts that generate the requirement, and where the distribution lands.

Empty the low-tax years on purpose

Look at the stretch between the year the paychecks stop and the year your applicable age arrives. Social Security may not have started; nothing is being forced out of anything. For many people those are the lowest-income years of an entire adult life — and low brackets do not roll over. Voluntary withdrawals or Roth conversions sized to the top of a bracket, taken then, shrink the balance the RMD is eventually calculated on. The retirement withdrawal guide and Stage 5 of the free course both work through it.

Send it to a charity instead

A qualified charitable distribution under § 408(d)(8) moves money directly from an IRA to a qualifying charity. It never appears in your income at all, which beats a deduction, and once distributions have begun a QCD counts toward the RMD. Three specifics:

• Available from age 70½ — earlier than the RMD age, which is not a typo
• Up to $111,000 for 2026, up from $108,000, and now indexed to inflation (IRS Notice 2025-67). A separate one-time election for a split-interest entity is capped at $55,000 for 2026
• It has to go directly from the IRA to the charity. Withdraw it first and write a check and you have made a taxable distribution plus a deductible gift — worse

Know what you are allowed to do with it

The requirement is that the money leaves the tax-deferred account, not that you consume it. A distribution bigger than your spending can go straight into an ordinary taxable brokerage account and stay in the same funds. What you lose is future tax deferral, not the investment. Money that arrives that way starts a fresh cost basis equal to its value on the day it landed — which matters later, both for your own capital gains and for what your heirs inherit. What you cannot do is roll an RMD over or convert it to a Roth — a required amount comes out and stays out.

Inherited accounts run on a different clock

Everything above is about your own account during your own life. An account you inherit is its own subject and deserves its own page. Here is enough to know whether you have one.

The old approach let a beneficiary spread distributions across their own life expectancy — decades, for a young heir. The SECURE Act ended that for most people. Under § 401(a)(9)(H), most beneficiaries now have to empty the account within ten years of the owner's death.

The exceptions are a defined list — § 401(a)(9)(E)(ii) calls them eligible designated beneficiaries, determined as of the date of death. Five categories: the surviving spouse; a minor child of the account owner, until majority; a person who is disabled within the meaning of § 72(m)(7); a person who is chronically ill under § 7702B(c)(2); and anyone not more than ten years younger than the deceased owner. Those beneficiaries can still use a life expectancy schedule. Note who is not on the list: an adult child, a grandchild, a sibling more than ten years younger. Most inheritances land in the ten-year rule.

Two practical notes. Inherited-account distributions use the Single Life Table (Table I), not the Uniform Lifetime Table. And a retirement account passes by beneficiary designation, which overrides a will and generally bypasses probate — so check that the form on file still names the person you mean.

What trips people up

• Taking the whole requirement from one IRA when part of it belongs to a 401(k). The aggregation rule pools IRAs and does not pool employer plans. This is the most common way a compliant-feeling person incurs an excise tax.
• Using the April 1 grace by accident. It is not an extension of the deadline — it is a merger of two tax years. Decide it on purpose or take the first distribution in its own year.
• Using last year's factor, or a pre-2022 table. The factor changes every year with your age, and the tables were replaced for distribution years beginning in 2022. A factor of 25.6 at age 73 means a stale source.
• Using the wrong balance. It is the closing value on December 31 of the prior year. Not today's, not an average, not the balance on your birthday.
• Assuming an old 401(k) is covered by the still-working exception. It only ever applies to the plan of the employer you currently work for, and never if you own 5% or more of that business.
• Trying to convert an RMD to a Roth. A required distribution cannot be rolled over or converted. Take it, then convert anything above it.
• Writing the charity a check yourself. A qualified charitable distribution has to go straight from the IRA to the charity, or the break disappears.
• Hiding from a missed distribution. The exposure is 25% of the amount you missed, dropping to 10% if you fix it in the window, and § 4974(d) lets the IRS waive it outright for reasonable error. Silence is the only version of this that stays expensive.

The figures on this page are checked against the source that publishes them, and dated. Published rates move after the release named above — the linked source always carries the current number. This page explains a term; it does not recommend a product.