Required Minimum Distributions: The 2026 RMD Rules

You turn 73 this year, you have a traditional IRA you have not touched since you retired, and someone has told you there is a 25% penalty attached to it. The fix is smaller than the fear: work out one number and move it out of the account before December 31, 2026.

The internet is full of wrong answers here because the starting age moved twice in three years and is scheduled to move again. This guide covers accounts you own. Accounts you inherited run on separate rules and are not covered here.

What age do RMDs actually start now?

The starting age is 73 if you were born from 1951 through 1959, and 75 if you were born in 1960 or later. The SECURE 2.0 Act of 2022 raised it from 72 to 73, and wrote the second step up to 75 into the same law.

The IRS final regulations on required minimum distributions set out the birth-date mapping directly. Here it is, with the year the first distribution is actually owed.

One wrinkle matters if you were born in 1959. The statute describes you twice, once at 73 and once at 75, and the 2024 final regulations left that paragraph blank rather than pick. The IRS filled the gap in a proposed regulation reading, in full, "In the case of an employee born in 1959, the applicable age is age 73." That is the agency's position, but it sits in a proposed rule, so treat 73 as the planning number and expect confirmation before 2032.

If you turned 73 at any point in 2026, including in December, 2026 is your first distribution year.

Why the first year is the one that costs money

Your first RMD, and only your first, can be delayed to April 1 of the following year. Every RMD after that is due December 31. That delay is the most expensive option most retirees are offered, because taking it puts two distributions into one calendar year.

Take a hypothetical. You turn 73 in 2026 with $500,000 in a traditional IRA on December 31, 2025. Your 2026 RMD is about $18,868. Delay it, and in 2027 you take that $18,868 by April 1 plus your 2027 RMD by December 31, roughly $19,800 on a similar balance. Call it $38,700 of extra taxable income in 2027 and nothing in 2026.

Four things react to that spike, and they compound:

• Your marginal rate. An extra $19,000 stacked on top of a normal year can cross a bracket line. The 2026 federal tax brackets show where those lines sit.
• The taxable share of Social Security. Benefits start becoming taxable once half your benefits plus your other income passes $25,000 single or $32,000 filing jointly, and up to 85% becomes taxable above $34,000 and $44,000. RMD income counts.
• The new senior deduction. The additional $6,000 deduction for people 65 and over, available for 2025 through 2028, phases out above $75,000 of modified AGI, $150,000 for joint filers.
• Medicare. Part B and Part D surcharges are set from the tax return two years earlier, so a 2027 income spike raises 2029 premiums. See how Medicare premiums are set for the brackets.

Delaying is sometimes still the right call, for example if 2027 is a genuinely low-income year. It is a calculation, not a default. Run both versions through an income tax calculator first.

How the amount is calculated

Take the account balance on December 31 of the prior year and divide it by a life expectancy factor from the IRS Uniform Lifetime Table. That is the whole formula. Your custodian usually computes it, but the legal obligation is yours.

The factors below come from Table III in IRS Publication 590-B, with a hypothetical $500,000 prior-year balance to show the shape of it.

The percentage rises every year, from roughly 3.8% at 73 to over 8% at 90. The table is built to empty the account across a lifetime.

One substitution exists. If your spouse is the sole beneficiary and is more than 10 years younger than you, you use the Joint and Last Survivor Table instead. It gives a larger denominator and a smaller required withdrawal. Nobody applies it for you if your beneficiary designation is out of date, which is a reason to check it.

Which accounts are swept into the rule

Traditional IRAs, SEP IRAs, SARSEPs and SIMPLE IRAs are all subject. So are employer plans: 401(k), 403(b), 457(b) and profit-sharing plans.

Roth IRAs are not subject during the owner's lifetime, and since 2024 neither are designated Roth accounts inside a 401(k) or 403(b). That second part still catches people. Before 2024 a Roth 401(k) balance did generate an RMD, which is why the old advice was to roll it to a Roth IRA before your required beginning date. Section 325 of SECURE 2.0 removed the requirement for years beginning after 2023, so that rollover is no longer forced. If you are still choosing which bucket to build, Roth and traditional accounts compared covers the trade-off, and the IRA contribution limits for 2026 cover what you can put in.

Beneficiaries of Roth accounts still face distribution rules. The lifetime exemption belongs to the original owner only.

Can you satisfy several accounts from one withdrawal?

Sometimes, and it depends on the account type.

IRAs can be aggregated. Employer plans generally cannot. With multiple traditional IRAs, you calculate the RMD for each one separately, add them up, and take the total from whichever IRA you like, or from several. Multiple 403(b) contracts work the same way among themselves.

401(k) and 457(b) accounts do not. Each plan account pays its own RMD out of that account, so two old 401(k)s means two withdrawals. The categories never cross either: an IRA withdrawal cannot satisfy a 401(k) RMD, and a 401(k) withdrawal cannot satisfy an IRA RMD, however large it was. A 401(k) balance calculator will show what sits in each plan, which is the first step to knowing how many separate withdrawals you owe.

What happens if you miss the deadline?

The excise tax is 25% of the amount you failed to distribute, reduced to 10% if you fix it inside the correction window. SECURE 2.0 cut both figures from the old 50%.

To get the 10% rate you have to do two things during the correction window: take a corrective distribution equal to the shortfall, and file a return reflecting the reduced tax. The window closes on the earliest of the date the IRS mails a deficiency notice, the date the tax is assessed, or the last day of the second taxable year beginning after the year the tax was imposed.

Either way you report it on Form 5329. If the shortfall was a reasonable error and you are fixing it, the Form 5329 instructions also let you request a waiver of the tax by entering "RC" and the waived amount on the form. A shortfall found in January is worth fixing at once rather than hiding.

Giving it to charity instead of taking the income

A qualified charitable distribution sends money straight from your IRA custodian to a charity, counts toward your RMD, and never appears in your adjusted gross income.

That last part is the point. Taking the distribution and then donating the cash gives you income plus a deduction, and the income still counts for Social Security taxability, the senior deduction phase-out and Medicare surcharges. A QCD skips the income line entirely.

Three details decide whether it is available to you:

1. Age 70½, not 73. QCDs open years before RMDs begin, and the half-year matters: the distribution has to happen on or after the actual date you turn 70½.
2. IRAs only. A QCD comes from an IRA, and not from an ongoing SEP or SIMPLE IRA. It cannot satisfy a 401(k) RMD.
3. A dollar ceiling. For 2026 the exclusion is $111,000 per person, indexed annually, with a separate one-time $55,000 election for a gift through a split-interest entity. Married couples each get their own limit.

You cannot also claim a charitable deduction for the amount excluded. That would be the same benefit twice.

Does the still-working exception apply to you?

Only to your current employer's plan, only if that plan allows it, and not if you own 5% or more of the business. If it applies, your required beginning date for that one plan moves to April 1 of the year after you retire.

It does not reach your IRAs, and it does not reach the 401(k) at the job you left years ago. Those start on schedule. Some plans accept a rollover in from a former employer's plan, which brings that money under the same delay.

What people get wrong about RMDs

• Using the age they remember. 70½ was replaced in 2020, 72 was replaced in 2023. Somebody born in 1955 who starts at 70½ has been paying tax years early for no reason.
• Taking a 401(k) RMD out of an IRA. The IRA distribution is fully taxable and the 401(k) shortfall still gets the excise tax. You pay twice for one withdrawal.
• Delaying the first one on autopilot. April 1 sounds like a favour. Model the two-in-one-year outcome before you accept it.
• Forgetting an old employer plan. A 401(k) at a job you left years ago has its own RMD and its own deadline, and the recordkeeper may only have an address you moved away from.
• Assuming an inherited account follows these rules. It does not. An inherited IRA has its own timetable, and if you have both your own IRA and an inherited one, the two can never be aggregated.
• Trusting the custodian to handle it. Most will calculate and even automate the withdrawal, but the tax falls on you, and automation set up years ago may point at a closed account.

Where this guide stops: inherited accounts

Everything above describes an account you own. Inherited accounts are a different subject, and treating them as the same is the most expensive error available here.

Beneficiaries fall into categories, spouses have election rights nobody else has, and most non-spouse beneficiaries face a ten-year window, with an annual withdrawal requirement inside it in some cases and not others. Parts of those regulations are unsettled: IRS Announcement 2026-7 says the final beneficiary rules will apply no earlier than the distribution year beginning at least six months after they are published, and that a reasonable, good-faith reading of the statute applies until then.

This guide also leaves out state income tax on distributions, which varies widely, and the separate rules for defined benefit pensions and annuitized contracts.

What to do before December 31, 2026

• List every retirement account you own, including plans at former employers, and confirm each one's December 31, 2025 balance.
• Confirm your applicable age against your birth date rather than against a number you remember.
• Calculate the RMD for each account separately, then decide which ones you are allowed to combine.
• Check the beneficiary designation on each account, since a spouse more than 10 years younger changes the table you use.
• If 2026 is your first distribution year, price both options: take it this year, or take two in 2027.
• If you give to charity and are past 70½, arrange any QCD directly with the custodian before the money reaches you.
• Confirm in early January that each distribution actually settled in 2026, because a transfer initiated on December 30 that posts on January 2 is a missed RMD.

Deadlines here are literal. December 31 cannot be extended, and the tax attaches to the shortfall whether or not anyone told you the money was due.