RMD calculator

The calculator

Tax on your RMD

An RMD from a traditional IRA or 401(k) is taxed as ordinary income in the year you take it. Enter your other income to see how much federal and state tax this year’s RMD adds after any QCD. Part of your Social Security can become taxable as the RMD raises your income, and that is counted too.

Your future RMDs, year by year

Each year’s RMD is last December’s balance divided by the divisor for your age. Whatever is left grows at the return you entered. Because the divisor shrinks every year, the RMD takes a rising share of the account: about 3.8% at 73, 5% at 80 and 8.2% at 90.

2026 RMD table (IRS Uniform Lifetime Table)

Most IRA owners and plan participants use this table. Find the age you reach on your birthday this year and divide last December’s balance by the divisor next to it. These divisors have applied since 2022 and are the same for 2026 and 2027 RMDs.

When RMDs start

The SECURE Act and SECURE 2.0 raised the starting age twice. For people born in 1959 the law as written gives two different ages; the IRS’s 2024 proposed regulation sets it at 73.

How to calculate an RMD by hand

Take the account balance on December 31 of last year. Find the divisor for the age you reach this year. Divide. At 75 the divisor is 24.6, so a $500,000 balance needs a withdrawal of $500,000 ÷ 24.6 = $20,325.20. At 73 it is 26.5, so the same balance needs $18,867.92. If you have several traditional IRAs, work out each one and add them up.

Deadlines

Each RMD is due by December 31. The first one is the exception: you can wait until April 1 of the following year. That delay means taking two RMDs in one tax year, which raises that year’s income and can push you into a higher tax bracket and a higher IRMAA tier two years later.

Which accounts need RMDs

• Traditional, SEP and SIMPLE IRAs. You can take the combined total from any one or more of them.
• 401(k), 403(b) and 457(b) plans. Each 401(k) takes its own RMD; 403(b)s can be combined with each other.
• Not Roth IRAs, and since 2024 not Roth 401(k) or other designated Roth accounts, while the original owner is alive. Money converted to Roth before RMDs start is no longer counted in the balance they are based on; the Roth conversion calculator shows the tax on converting now.
• Still working: if you own 5% or less of your employer and its plan allows it, RMDs from that plan can wait until you retire. IRAs still require them.

RMDs from a 401(k)

A 401(k) uses the same table and the same start age as an IRA, with three differences.

• Each 401(k) pays its own RMD. You cannot take one plan’s RMD from another plan or from an IRA, the way you can between traditional IRAs.
• Your current employer’s plan can wait until you retire if you own 5% or less of the company and the plan allows it. Plans from past employers cannot.
• An RMD cannot be rolled over. In a year when an RMD is due, take it before you move the rest of a 401(k) into an IRA; the first dollars out of the plan count toward the RMD.

Roth 401(k) money has needed no RMDs since 2024. Many people roll old 401(k)s into one IRA so a single RMD covers them, which this calculator then works out from the combined December 31 balance.

Missing an RMD

The IRS charges a 25% excise tax on the amount you should have taken and did not. It falls to 10% if you take the missed amount within the correction window. You report it on Form 5329, which is also where you ask for the tax to be waived if the shortfall had a reasonable cause and you have since corrected it.

RMD vs QCD

From age 70½ you can send up to $111,000 in 2026 directly from an IRA to a charity as a qualified charitable distribution. It counts toward that year’s RMD and is left out of your adjusted gross income, which lowers both your income tax and the MAGI that sets your Medicare premiums. Enter a QCD in the calculator to see the taxable part that remains.

If you give to charity anyway, a QCD usually beats taking the RMD and donating the cash. The cash route adds the full RMD to your income and only helps if you itemize, and most retirees take the standard deduction. With a QCD the gift never reaches your income, so it can also keep more of your Social Security untaxed and keep you under an IRMAA threshold. QCDs come only from IRAs, not from a 401(k) directly, and the money must go straight from the IRA to the charity.

Inherited IRAs

For an inherited account, the inherited IRA RMD calculator works out which rule applies, this year’s amount and the deadline.

If the owner died after 2019, most beneficiaries who are not a spouse must empty the account by December 31 of the tenth year after the death. If the owner had already reached their required beginning date, the beneficiary must also take a yearly RMD in years one to nine, under final IRS regulations that apply from 2025. The IRS waived the penalty for missed yearly amounts from 2021 to 2024, but not the ten-year deadline.

Eligible designated beneficiaries can stretch withdrawals over their own life expectancy instead: a surviving spouse, the owner’s minor child until 21, a disabled or chronically ill person, and anyone not more than 10 years younger than the owner. A non-spouse beneficiary uses the divisor for their age in the year after the death from the Single Life table, then subtracts one each year.

Assumptions and sources

The projection assumes no new contributions, takes each RMD from the previous year-end balance, and grows the rest at a steady return. The tax on the RMD runs this year’s federal and state return twice, with and without the RMD, on 2026 brackets with the standard deduction and the 2025 to 2028 senior deduction. Killion’s planner does the same for every simulated year when you turn tax on in a paid plan, and it takes RMDs from pre-tax accounts each year. A spouse more than 10 years younger who is the sole beneficiary changes the table; the calculator flags that case rather than computing it.

Figures checked on October 9, 2026 against IRS Publication 590-B (2025), Distributions from IRAs, IRS, Retirement plan and IRA required minimum distributions FAQs, IRS Notice 2025-67, 2026 retirement plan limits (PDF) and T.D. 10001, final required minimum distribution regulations (July 19, 2024).

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