RMD Calculator

This RMD calculator works out the required minimum distribution you have to take from a tax-deferred retirement account, using the distribution periods in IRS Publication 590-B. The example loaded on this page is someone born in 1951 with $300,000 in the account on 31 December 2025: at age 75 the distribution period is 24.6, so the 2026 RMD is $12,195.12, which is 4.07% of the balance. The projection underneath carries that forward to age 120 at your assumed rate of return.

What an RMD is and why it exists

A required minimum distribution is the smallest amount the IRS makes you pull out of a tax-deferred account each year once you reach the starting age. It is a floor, not a ceiling: take more whenever you need it, and the extra simply gets taxed as income. Every dollar in a traditional IRA or 401(k) went in untaxed and has compounded untaxed for decades, so the RMD rules are how the government eventually collects. That is also why Roth accounts, funded with money already taxed, sit outside the system while you are alive.

The formula and the table

Two numbers produce your RMD: the balance on the last day of the previous year, and a distribution period from an IRS table.

RMD = prior year-end balance ÷ distribution period

Almost everyone uses the Uniform Lifetime Table. The period shrinks as you age, so the required percentage climbs: 26.5 at 73 (3.77% of the balance), 24.6 at 75 (4.07%), 20.2 at 80 (4.95%), and 12.2 at 90 (8.20%). One exception changes the table. If your sole beneficiary is a spouse more than ten years younger than you, the Joint Life and Last Survivor Expectancy Table applies instead, and it gives a longer period and a smaller required withdrawal. This calculator flags that case rather than guessing at it, because the joint table needs both ages.

Note what the balance figure does not include. It is the 31 December value, so a market drop in the following spring does not reduce what you owe that year. A rollover in transit over year-end still counts, and the balance of any annuity inside the IRA has to be valued too.

When yours starts, and the April 1 trap

The starting age is 73 for anyone born between 1951 and 1959, and 75 for anyone born in 1960 or later. It has moved twice in recent years: 70 and a half until 2019, then 72 under the SECURE Act, then 73 under SECURE 2.0 from 2023.

Your first RMD alone can be delayed to 1 April of the following year. Every RMD after that is due 31 December. Take the delay and you land two withdrawals in one calendar year, which stacks both into a single tax return and can push you into a higher bracket or across a Medicare surcharge threshold. Someone turning 73 in 2026 can take their first RMD any time in 2026, or wait until 1 April 2027 and then owe the 2027 distribution by 31 December 2027 as well. The delay is usually only worth taking if 2027 will be a much lower income year.

Which accounts have RMDs

Nearly every tax-deferred retirement account carries the requirement:

• traditional, rollover, SEP, and SIMPLE IRAs;
• traditional 401(k), most 403(b) and governmental 457(b) plans;
• profit-sharing plans and other qualified employer plans;
• annuities held inside an IRA or plan, which are valued and counted like any other asset.

Roth IRAs never require distributions during the owner's lifetime. Roth 401(k)s used to, and that changed: starting in 2024, SECURE 2.0 removed RMDs from designated Roth accounts in employer plans, so the old advice to roll a Roth 401(k) into a Roth IRA purely to escape RMDs no longer applies. Withdrawing from a Roth also never counts toward the RMD on a traditional account, and taking more than the minimum one year does not reduce the requirement the next, because next year's figure always starts from the new balance. The Roth IRA Calculator and 401(k) Calculator cover those accounts on their own terms.

Calculate per account, then choose where to take it from

Each account gets its own calculation. Where the money physically comes out depends on the account type:

• IRAs: compute separately, then take the combined total from any one IRA or spread it across several.
• 403(b)s: same treatment, aggregated only with other 403(b)s.
• 401(k)s: no aggregation. Each plan must pay its own RMD, which catches people who left accounts behind at several employers.
• Inherited IRAs: aggregate only accounts inherited from the same person, and never with your own IRAs.

There is also a still-working exception. If you are past the starting age but still employed by the company sponsoring your 401(k), and you own 5% or less of that business, you can defer that plan's RMD until you retire. It applies to the current employer's plan only, so IRAs and old 401(k)s from previous jobs keep paying out on schedule. Rolling those old plans into your current employer's plan is one way to use the exception more widely.

What happens if you miss one

The penalty is a 25% excise tax on whatever you failed to withdraw, cut to 10% if you fix the shortfall inside a two-year correction window. Miss $4,000 of a required distribution and the bill is $1,000, or $400 if corrected in time. SECURE 2.0 reduced this from the old 50% penalty, which was one of the harshest in the tax code.

The fix is straightforward: take the missed amount as soon as you notice, file Form 5329 for the year you missed, and attach a short statement explaining the reasonable error and the steps you took to correct it. The IRS waives the penalty in many of these cases, though nothing about that is automatic. Within the year itself, timing is entirely up to you. Monthly transfers, a single December withdrawal, or anything in between all satisfy the rule as long as the total is out by the deadline.

Tax, and the knock-on effects people miss

RMDs are taxed as ordinary income at federal and, in most places, state level. They land on top of everything else you earn that year, which is what makes the second-order effects worth planning for:

• Medicare premiums. IRMAA surcharges are set from your tax return two years earlier, so a large distribution in 2026 raises Part B and Part D premiums in 2028. The thresholds are cliffs, and one dollar over adds the whole surcharge.
• Social Security. Up to 85% of your benefit becomes taxable once combined income passes the thresholds, and a big RMD is exactly what pushes it there. The Social Security Calculator shows how the two interact.
• Withholding. IRA distributions default to 10% federal withholding, which is often too little. You can raise it, and a December RMD with heavy withholding is a common way to cover a whole year's tax bill without quarterly estimates.

Ways to make the bill smaller

The most efficient move is a qualified charitable distribution. From age 70 and a half you can send up to $108,000 in 2025, indexed each year, straight from an IRA to a qualified charity. It counts toward the RMD and never appears in your adjusted gross income, which beats taking the money and claiming a deduction, especially now that most filers use the standard deduction. The transfer has to go directly from custodian to charity.

The second lever is timing, and it works before the RMDs start. The years between retirement and 73 are usually the lowest-income years of your life, which is when converting slices of a traditional IRA to a Roth is cheapest. Every dollar converted shrinks the balance the future RMD is calculated from, and the Roth itself never has one. A QLAC does something similar by moving up to $210,000 as of 2025 out of the RMD calculation until payments start, which can be as late as 85. The Annuity Calculator covers that contract in detail.

One practical point that surprises people: an RMD does not have to be sold. You can transfer shares in kind from the IRA to a taxable brokerage account. The distribution is taxed at the value on the transfer date either way, but you stay invested, which matters if you are taking the withdrawal in a down market. The Retirement Calculator helps position the rest of the plan around it.

Inherited accounts

Inheriting changes the rules completely. Since the SECURE Act of 2019, most non-spouse beneficiaries must empty an inherited IRA within ten years of the owner's death, which ended the old stretch IRA. Final regulations issued in 2024 added a wrinkle that caught a lot of people out: if the original owner had already begun RMDs, the beneficiary must also take annual distributions during those ten years, on top of clearing the account by year ten. The IRS waived enforcement of those annual amounts through 2024, and they are required from 2025 onward.

Eligible designated beneficiaries escape the ten-year clock. That group covers a surviving spouse, a minor child of the owner until age 21 with the ten-year window starting then, someone disabled or chronically ill, and anyone less than ten years younger than the deceased. They can generally stretch distributions over their own life expectancy.

A surviving spouse has the widest choice. Rolling the account into their own IRA is usually simplest, since the money then follows the normal rules based on their own age. Keeping it as an inherited IRA instead can make sense when the survivor is under 59 and a half and needs access without the early withdrawal penalty; in that case RMDs begin either the year after death, or the year the deceased would have reached 73 if they died earlier. An inherited Roth IRA follows the same map: a spouse who assumes it as their own has no RMDs at all, while a non-spouse falls under the ten-year rule, though without the annual distributions since a Roth owner is never treated as having begun them.

Inherited 401(k)s answer to the plan document as well as the tax code. A plan may let you leave the money where it is, force a lump sum, or offer a five-year payout, and by law a married participant's beneficiary is their spouse unless the spouse signed a waiver. Rolling the balance into an inherited IRA usually restores the flexibility described above. The IRA Calculator is the place to model what is left.

Whose job is it, really

Custodians and plan administrators have to notify you that an RMD is due and offer to calculate it, and they report the year-end balance to the IRS on Form 5498. None of that transfers the responsibility. If the custodian's figure is wrong, the penalty still lands on you, which is a strong argument for checking the number yourself each year, especially if you hold accounts at more than one firm or something changed, like a rollover, an annuity purchase, or a death in the family.

Reading the projection

The bar chart pairs the year-end balance against the RMD at every age. On the loaded figures the balance holds roughly flat into the mid-80s, because a 5% return nearly covers a 4% withdrawal, then falls away as the distribution period shortens and the required percentage climbs past 8%. The second chart tracks the same run as two lines: how much you have taken out to date, and how much is left. The crossover point, where cumulative withdrawals overtake the remaining balance, is the moment the account stops being a nest egg and becomes an income stream. The table below lists every year with its distribution period, RMD, and closing balance.