Required Minimum Distributions, Explained

By Bob Lobclaw · July 13, 2026

Pre-tax retirement accounts — a traditional 401(k) or IRA — let your money grow without paying tax on it every year. That deal doesn’t last forever. Once you reach a certain age, the IRS requires you to start withdrawing a minimum amount annually, whether you need the cash or not, so it can finally start collecting tax on decades of deferred growth. That withdrawal is the Required Minimum Distribution, or RMD.

Which accounts, and at what age

RMDs apply to traditional IRAs, SEP and SIMPLE IRAs, and traditional 401(k)/403(b) plans. The RMD age itself has been a moving target: SECURE 2.0 raised it from 72 to 73 for anyone turning 73 between 2023 and 2032, and it steps up again to 75 for people born in 1960 or later. Roth IRAs have never had RMDs for the original owner, and since 2024, Roth 401(k)/403(b) accounts don’t either — another reason Roth balances are often treated as the “last money spent” in a retirement plan.

How the amount is calculated

Your RMD is your account balance as of December 31 of the prior year, divided by a life expectancy factor from an IRS table — usually the Uniform Lifetime Table, unless your sole beneficiary is a spouse more than 10 years younger, in which case a more favorable Joint Life and Last Survivor Table applies instead.

Example: a $500,000 pre-tax balance at age 73 uses a Uniform Lifetime Table factor of 26.5. $500,000 ÷ 26.5 ≈ $18,868 is the minimum you must withdraw that year. The factor shrinks every year as you age — by 80 it’s around 20.2, by 90 around 12.2 — so the required percentage of the balance you must withdraw climbs over time, even as the dollar amount depends on how the account performs.

If you have multiple traditional IRAs, you calculate the RMD for each but can withdraw the total from just one of them, or split it however you like. 401(k)s don’t get that flexibility — each employer plan’s RMD generally has to come out of that plan specifically. 403(b) accounts can be aggregated among themselves, similar to IRAs.

A timing quirk worth knowing

Your very first RMD can be delayed until April 1 of the year after you reach your RMD age, instead of taking it by December 31 of that year. It sounds like a grace period, but it usually isn’t a good idea to use it: delaying means two RMDs land in the same calendar year — the delayed first one and the regular second one — which can bunch enough income together to push you into a higher tax bracket or trigger a Medicare IRMAA surcharge two years later. Most people are better off just taking the first RMD in the year they become eligible.

What happens if you miss one

Missing an RMD, or taking less than required, triggers an excise tax on the shortfall — 25% under SECURE 2.0, down from the old 50% penalty. Correct the mistake within two years and the penalty drops further, to 10%. It’s a steep enough penalty that RMDs are worth calendaring, especially in a year with account transfers, a new custodian, or multiple accounts to track.

Why RMDs matter beyond the paperwork

An RMD is taxed as ordinary income, and it’s not optional income — it lands on top of Social Security, pensions, and anything else you’re already drawing. A large pre-tax balance built up over a career can force a surprisingly large RMD later in retirement, pushing you into a higher marginal bracket or across an IRMAA threshold that raises Medicare Part B and D premiums. This is the main reason RMDs come up so often in Roth conversion planning: converting some pre-tax balance to Roth in the years before RMDs start — when you may be in a lower bracket than you will be later — shrinks the balance the IRS will eventually force you to withdraw.

A few ways people manage them

Roth conversions before RMD age. Filling up room in your current tax bracket with conversions in your 60s and early 70s can meaningfully shrink the pre-tax balance — and therefore future RMDs — if your current rate isn’t much lower than the rate you’d otherwise pay on forced withdrawals later. See the Roth vs. 401(k) comparison for the tradeoff mechanics.
Qualified Charitable Distributions (QCDs). If you’re charitably inclined, sending money directly from an IRA to a qualified charity — up to $108,000 per person in 2025, indexed annually — counts toward your RMD but isn’t included in your taxable income at all, available starting at age 70½.
Spending pre-tax balances down earlier. Some retirees deliberately draw more from pre-tax accounts in their 60s, before RMDs are even a factor, specifically to reduce the balance — and the eventual RMD — later on.

The bottom line

RMDs aren’t a penalty, but they do take the timing decision out of your hands once you reach the required age, and a large pre-tax balance can force more taxable income than you actually need to spend in a given year. Whether that’s a problem worth planning around depends on how big your pre-tax balance is likely to grow relative to your spending — which is exactly what the retirement calculator’s RMD breakdown is built to show, year by year. The full set of assumptions and IRS tables used is documented on the Data & Logic page.

Educational content, not personalized financial advice — see the disclaimer.