How to Calculate Your RMD: 3 Steps + Example

The math is simpler than the rules around it. Your RMD for the year is your account balance from the previous December 31, divided by a life-expectancy factor the IRS publishes for your age. That’s it. Here’s how to run the numbers for 2026 — this works whether you’re calculating an RMD for one IRA or figuring out how to calculate RMD for multiple IRAs in 2026.

1. Find your December 31, 2025 balance. Pull the year-end statement for each retirement account that requires an RMD. Use that closing balance — not today’s value, and not an average.
2. Find your age factor. Look up your age (the age you’ll reach by the end of 2026) in the IRS Uniform Lifetime Table below. At 73, the factor is 26.5. Most account owners use this table; a couple of exceptions are noted underneath it.
3. Divide. Balance ÷ factor = your RMD for the year.

Worked example. Say you turn 73 in 2026 and your Traditional IRA closed 2025 at $500,000. Your factor is 26.5, so:

$500,000 ÷ 26.5 = $18,868

That $18,868 is the minimum you must withdraw by December 31, 2026. You can always take more — there’s no upper limit — but taking less than the required amount is what triggers the penalty. Notice that the same $500,000 produces a larger RMD every year as the factor shrinks: $20,325 at age 75 (factor 24.6) and $24,752 at age 80 (factor 20.2), even if the balance never grows.

The 2026 IRS RMD Table (Uniform Lifetime)

This is the table most account owners use. The factors haven’t changed since the IRS updated them in 2022, so the 2026 figures match prior years. The third column converts each factor into a rough percentage of your balance, so you can estimate your RMD at a glance without dividing.

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Two situations call for a different table. If your spouse is more than 10 years younger than you and is your sole beneficiary, you use the more generous Joint and Last Survivor Table, which produces a smaller RMD. And if you’re taking distributions from an inherited account, you use the Single Life Table. The full factors live in IRS Publication 590-B.

Quick Answers to the Top RMD Questions

What’s the RMD age in 2026?

It’s 73 if you were born between 1951 and 1959, and 75 if you were born in 1960 or later. Anyone already taking RMDs under the old rules keeps going. More detail — including a real drafting quirk that affected 1959 babies — in the RMD age section.

When’s the deadline?

December 31 of each year. The one exception is your very first RMD, which you may defer to April 1 of the following year — though doing so stacks two RMDs into one tax year.

Which accounts require RMDs?

Traditional, SEP, and SIMPLE IRAs, Solo 401(k)s, plus 401(k), 403(b), and 457(b) plans. Roth 401(k)s and Roth 403(b)s no longer require them, and a Roth IRA never does during the owner’s lifetime. See the full account table.

What’s the penalty now?

25% of whatever you failed to withdraw — down from the old 50%. Correct the shortfall within two years and it drops to 10%. Details in the penalty section.

How do I avoid the tax?

The cleanest move is a Qualified Charitable Distribution if you give to charity; Roth conversions before 73, a QLAC, and careful timing also help. Jump to strategies to cut the tax.

What Is an RMD — and Which Accounts Require One?

A required minimum distribution is exactly what it sounds like: the smallest amount the IRS forces you to withdraw each year from a tax-deferred retirement account once you hit your starting age. The logic is straightforward. While you were working, that money went in pre-tax and grew untaxed for decades. RMDs are the point where the government finally collects the income tax it deferred — so it won’t let the balance sit there forever.

Not every account is on the hook, and the differences matter for your planning.

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The headline takeaway: Roth money you own is left alone. A Roth IRA has never carried RMDs for its owner, and as of 2024 the same is true for Roth balances inside a 401(k) or 403(b). Everything funded with pre-tax dollars eventually has to come out. And if you’re self-employed with a Solo 401(k) (sometimes marketed as a Keogh-style plan for older sole proprietors), don’t assume it’s exempt — it follows the same 401(k) RMD schedule as any employer plan.

RMD Age in 2026: When You Must Start

Your starting age depends entirely on your birth year. The SECURE 2.0 Act pushed the age up in two steps, so the answer is no longer a single number.

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So if you were born in 1953, you turn 73 in 2026 and this is your first RMD year. If you were born in 1960 or after, your first RMD is years away — your starting age jumps to 75, and that doesn’t begin to bite until 2035.

The first-RMD April 1 rule — and the trap inside it

Your first RMD has a special grace period. Instead of the usual December 31 deadline, you’re allowed to delay your first distribution until April 1 of the following year — what the IRS calls your Required Beginning Date. Turn 73 in 2026, and you could wait until April 1, 2027, to take your 2026 RMD.

Here’s the catch most people miss: every later RMD is still due by December 31. So if you push that first one into 2027, you’ll take two RMDs in the same calendar year — the delayed 2026 distribution by April 1, and the 2027 distribution by December 31. Stacking two years of taxable income into one year can bump you into a higher bracket, increase the share of your Social Security that’s taxed, and inflate the MAGI that drives your Medicare premiums. Most planners take the first RMD on time, by December 31 of the first year, unless there’s a specific reason delaying helps.

SECURE Act 2.0: What Changed for RMDs

If the RMD rules feel like they keep moving, that’s because they have. The SECURE 2.0 Act of 2022 rewrote several of them, and the changes are mostly in your favor.

• The starting age went up. RMDs moved from 72 to 73 beginning in 2023, and they’re scheduled to rise again to 75 in 2033 for those born in 1960 or later. (Section 107 of the law set this two-step schedule.)
• The penalty was cut in half. The excise tax for a missed RMD dropped from a brutal 50% to 25% — and to just 10% if you correct it promptly.
• Roth 401(k) RMDs were eliminated. As of January 1, 2024, you no longer have to take RMDs from a Roth 401(k) or Roth 403(b) during your lifetime, bringing them in line with Roth IRAs.
• The QCD limit is now indexed. The cap on tax-free charitable distributions from an IRA rises with inflation each year rather than sitting frozen at $100,000 — it’s $111,000 for 2026.
• A new charitable option arrived. Section 307 added a one-time-only, $55,000-in-2026 QCD option that can fund a charitable gift annuity or charitable remainder trust — see the tax-reduction section below.

SECURE 2.0 also reshaped catch-up contributions and added a Roth requirement for certain high earners’ catch-ups beginning in 2026 — changes that affect how you fund retirement rather than how you draw it down. Those deserve their own treatment; here we’ll keep the focus on distributions.

The RMD Penalty — and How to Fix a Missed RMD

Miss an RMD, or take out too little, and the IRS charges an excise tax of 25% on the amount you should have withdrawn but didn’t. On a $20,000 shortfall, that’s a $5,000 penalty — on top of the ordinary income tax you’ll still owe when you do take the money.

The relief valve is the two-year correction window. If you catch the mistake, withdraw the missed amount, and file the right paperwork within two years, the penalty falls to 10%. You report the shortfall and the tax on IRS Form 5329 (Additional Taxes on Qualified Plans), Part IX.

You can also ask the IRS to waive the penalty entirely for reasonable cause — a serious illness, a custodian error, or bad advice you reasonably relied on. Take the missed distribution as soon as you spot the gap, then file Form 5329 with a short statement explaining what happened and how you fixed it.

Because you — not your custodian — are legally responsible for the right amount on time, set an annual reminder and confirm the figure before December.

Inherited IRA RMD Rules: The 10-Year Rule

Inherited accounts follow a completely different rulebook, reshaped by the original SECURE Act in 2020. Don’t apply owner rules to an account you inherited — the tests below are what matter.

First, the law sorts beneficiaries into two groups. Eligible designated beneficiaries — a surviving spouse, a minor child of the owner, someone disabled or chronically ill, or a beneficiary less than 10 years younger than the owner — can generally stretch distributions over their own life expectancy. Everyone else (most adult children, for instance) is a non-eligible designated beneficiary and falls under the 10-year rule.

The 10-year rule means the entire inherited account must be emptied by the end of the tenth year after the owner’s death. What trips people up is the question of annual RMDs within that window:

• If the original owner died on or after their Required Beginning Date (they’d already started RMDs), you must take an annual RMD in years one through nine and empty the account by year 10. Skipping a year here — not just missing the final year-10 deadline — is what usually triggers the penalty on a missed inherited-IRA RMD.
• If the owner died before their Required Beginning Date, there are no required annual withdrawals — you just have to clear the balance by the end of year 10, on whatever schedule you choose.

Spouses get the most flexibility: a surviving spouse can typically roll the inherited IRA into their own and treat it as if it were theirs all along, deferring RMDs until they reach their own RMD age.

This is a dense area with real money at stake, so when an inheritance is involved, confirm your exact category before you take — or skip — a distribution. We cover the mechanics in depth in a dedicated guide to inherited IRA rules.

How to Avoid or Reduce Taxes on Your RMD

You can’t refuse an RMD, but you have real control over how much tax it costs you. The strongest moves either route the money somewhere the IRS doesn’t tax, shrink the balance that RMDs are calculated from, or smooth your income so a big distribution doesn’t collide with other spikes. Here are the levers that actually work.

Qualified Charitable Distributions (QCDs)

If you give to charity, this is the most efficient tool in the code. A QCD lets you send money directly from your IRA to a qualifying public charity — and it counts toward your RMD while staying out of your taxable income entirely. For 2026 the limit is $111,000 per person (a married couple with separate IRAs can each do their own, for up to $222,000 combined). You must be at least 70½, the funds have to move directly from the IRA to a 501(c)(3) charity, and donor-advised funds and private foundations don’t qualify. Because the distribution never hits your adjusted gross income, a QCD is especially powerful for the roughly nine in ten retirees who take the standard deduction and would otherwise get no tax benefit from giving. You report it by writing the distribution on Form 1040 and noting the QCD on line 4b.

The $55,000 split-interest QCD: a Charitable Remainder Trust alternative

Since SECURE 2.0, there’s a second, one-time-only charitable option worth knowing if you’re giving a larger sum. Under Section 307, you can direct up to $55,000 (2026 limit) from your IRA into a charitable gift annuity, a charitable remainder annuity trust (CRAT), or a charitable remainder unitrust (CRUT) — vehicles that pay you an income stream for life (or a term of years) before the remainder eventually goes to charity. This counts toward your annual $111,000 QCD cap rather than sitting on top of it, and the election can only be made once, in one tax year. It’s a middle ground between a simple QCD (money leaves entirely) and a full standalone Charitable Remainder Trust funded outside your IRA (typically used for much larger gifts and set up with an estate attorney) — worth raising with an advisor if you want the RMD tax break and a lifetime payout.

Roth conversions before 73

Every dollar you move from a Traditional IRA to a Roth IRA before RMDs begin is a dollar that no longer counts toward future RMDs — Roth IRAs have none for the owner. Done in your 60s or early 70s, in years when your income is lower, conversions can meaningfully shrink the balance driving your later RMDs. The trade-off is that the converted amount is taxable in the year you convert, so it pays to spread conversions across several years and stay mindful of bracket and Medicare thresholds. Our guide to Roth versus Traditional IRA conversions walks through the timing.

Qualified Longevity Annuity Contracts (QLACs)

A QLAC lets you move part of your IRA into a deferred annuity that pays out later in life. Dollars inside a QLAC are excluded from the balance used to calculate your RMDs, effectively deferring the income (and the tax) until the annuity begins. The trade-off is liquidity — that money is locked up. See our overview of fixed, variable, and indexed annuities for how QLACs fit in.

The still-working exception

If you’re still employed past 73 and own 5% or less of the company, you can usually delay RMDs from that current employer’s plan until you actually retire — so the answer to “do I have to take an RMD if I’m still working at 74” is often no, for that specific plan. The catch: it only covers your present employer’s plan. Old 401(k)s from former jobs, and all your Traditional, SEP, and SIMPLE IRAs, still require RMDs on the normal schedule.

Tax-efficient timing

The RMD itself is fixed, but the income around it isn’t. Avoid stacking a large RMD on top of other one-time income — a Roth conversion, a capital gain, a property sale — in the same year. Coordinating withdrawals across accounts, sometimes called withdrawal sequencing, can keep you below bracket and surcharge cliffs. Our piece on retirement income planning goes deeper on sequencing.

Mind the IRMAA cliff

A big RMD raises your MAGI, which can push you past a Medicare income threshold and trigger a surcharge two years later. Because those thresholds are cliffs — cross one by a dollar and the whole surcharge applies — it’s worth watching your income near year-end. More on this just below.

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RMDs, Capital Gains, and Your Medicare Premiums (the IRMAA Link)

This is the cost most retirees never see coming. Medicare uses your modified adjusted gross income to decide whether you pay a surcharge on your Part B and Part D premiums — the IRMAA. A large RMD raises your MAGI, and because Medicare looks back two years, a big distribution in 2026 can lift your premiums in 2028.

What makes IRMAA sting is that the brackets are cliffs: go a single dollar over a threshold and the full surcharge for that tier kicks in, for both spouses if you’re married. That’s exactly why timing your RMD — and pairing it with a QCD to keep the income off your return — can be worth real money. Check the current thresholds in our breakdown of the 2026 IRMAA brackets before you finalize any large withdrawal.

Common RMD Mistakes

• Missing the December 31 deadline. The 25% penalty applies to the shortfall, so even a partial miss costs you.
• The first-year double-up. Deferring your first RMD to April 1 forces two RMDs into one tax year — often a costlier choice than just taking it on time.
• Mis-aggregating accounts. You can pool IRA RMDs and 403(b) RMDs (each within their own account type), but each 401(k) and 457(b) must pay its own. Taking a 401(k)’s RMD from an IRA doesn’t satisfy it.
• Forgetting inherited-account RMDs. Inherited accounts have their own deadlines, and many beneficiaries owe annual RMDs inside the 10-year window.
• Triggering IRMAA — or a higher capital gains bracket — by accident. A large distribution can lift your Medicare premiums two years later, or push other income into a higher tax tier, if it pushes your MAGI over a threshold.
• Assuming a Roth 401(k) still needs an RMD. It hasn’t since 2024 — leaving that money in keeps it growing tax-free.

Frequently Asked Questions

Sources

Figures verified against IRS Publication 590-B, the IRS retirement plan and IRA RMD FAQs, IRS Instructions for Form 5329, the SECURE 2.0 Act of 2022 (Sections 107 and 307), the IRS’s July 2024 proposed RMD regulations addressing the 1959 birth-year applicable-age ambiguity, and IRS Notice 2025-67 setting the 2026 QCD limit at $111,000 (with the related $55,000 split-interest QCD cap).