Required minimum distributions are the IRS calling in the deferral. Once you reach age 73, every pre-tax retirement account owes an annual withdrawal computed from the Uniform Lifetime Table, and skipping it costs 25 percent of the shortfall, one of the harshest penalties in the tax code. This calculator runs the exact division the law requires, shows the tax at your marginal bracket, previews the penalty if the deadline slips, and projects the next ten years so you can see the ratchet coming: the required percentage climbs from 4.07 percent of the balance at 75 to nearly 6 percent by 84, whether or not you need the money.
The RMD formula is one division, and the difficulty is everything around it. The balance is frozen at last December 31; gains and losses since then are irrelevant to this year's number. The divisor comes from your age this calendar year, not your birthday mid-point. The deadline is December 31, with one carve-out for the very first RMD. And the tax treatment is the least forgiving part: every dollar of the distribution is ordinary income, stacked on top of your Social Security, pension, and investment income, which is how a routine 4 percent withdrawal quietly becomes the line item that pushes a return into a higher bracket or a Medicare surcharge tier.
This page answers the questions custodians do not. Your brokerage will tell you the minimum; it will not tell you what the RMD path does to your taxes over the next decade, what the penalty would actually cost if the deadline slipped, or how much of the withdrawal you keep after federal tax. It will also not show the planning leverage: at these defaults, moving $200,000 into Roth years earlier cuts this year's RMD from $30,487.80 to $22,357.72, a permanent $8,130.08 annual reduction in forced taxable income. Survey data assembled by J.P. Morgan Asset Management suggests roughly four in five retirees withdraw no more than the required minimum, which makes the RMD not a floor most people exceed but the de facto withdrawal plan itself, and worth projecting honestly.
Variables in plain terms. The balance is the account value on the prior December 31, the number printed on your year-end statement, $750,000 at the defaults. The distribution period is the IRS life expectancy factor for your age this year: 24.6 at 75, 23.7 at 76, 22.9 at 77, and so on down to 6.4 at age 100. Multiple traditional IRAs are calculated separately and then summed, and the total can come out of any of them; employer plans like a 401(k) must be satisfied from that plan. The projection compounds the assumed growth g on the balance and subtracts each year's RMD, which approximates the self-funding pattern where the account grows faster than the early withdrawal rate consumes it, until the ratchet wins.
Age 75, with $750,000 in a traditional IRA on last December 31. The Uniform Lifetime Table divisor for 75 is 24.6, so the 2026 RMD is $750,000 ÷ 24.6 = $30,487.80, which is 4.07 percent of the balance. At a 22 percent marginal rate the federal tax is $6,707.32 and the after-tax spendable amount is $23,780.49. Nothing has been withdrawn yet this year, so the penalty preview prices a total miss: $7,621.95 at the full 25 percent excise rate, dropping to $3,048.78 if the shortfall is corrected within the two-year window SECURE 2.0 created.
| Result at the defaults | Amount |
|---|---|
| Prior December 31 balance | $750,000.00 |
| Age this year / distribution period | 75 / 24.6 |
| Required minimum distribution (4.07% of balance) | $30,487.80 |
| Federal tax at 22% | −$6,707.32 |
| After-tax amount kept | $23,780.49 |
| Penalty if the full RMD is missed (25% excise) | $7,621.95 |
| Penalty if corrected within two years (10%) | $3,048.78 |
Run the defaults forward and the mechanics of the ratchet appear. Each year the divisor shrinks, so the required percentage of the balance climbs, from 4.07 percent at 75 toward 6 percent by the mid-eighties. In the early years, 5 percent assumed growth outruns the withdrawal and the balance holds nearly flat, which is why the dollar RMDs grow faster than the percentages: the account is still compounding while the divisor collapses. By age 80 the required withdrawal is $38,279.81, 25.6 percent more than the first year, and the tax bill has grown from $6,707.32 to $8,421.56 at the same 22 percent bracket.
| Age | Divisor | Balance (Jan 1) | RMD | % of balance | Tax at 22% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 75 | 24.6 | $750,000.00 | $30,487.80 | 4.07% | $6,707.32 |
| 76 | 23.7 | $757,012.20 | $31,941.44 | 4.22% | $7,027.12 |
| 77 | 22.9 | $762,921.36 | $33,315.34 | 4.37% | $7,329.38 |
| 78 | 22.0 | $767,752.09 | $34,897.82 | 4.55% | $7,677.52 |
| 79 | 21.1 | $771,241.87 | $36,551.75 | 4.74% | $8,041.38 |
| 80 | 20.2 | $773,252.22 | $38,279.81 | 4.95% | $8,421.56 |
| 81 | 19.4 | $773,635.01 | $39,878.09 | 5.15% | $8,773.18 |
| 82 | 18.5 | $772,438.67 | $41,753.44 | 5.41% | $9,185.76 |
| 83 | 17.7 | $769,307.16 | $43,463.68 | 5.65% | $9,562.01 |
| 84 | 16.8 | $764,308.84 | $45,494.57 | 5.95% | $10,008.81 |
Two readings of this table matter. The comfortable one: after ten years and $376,063.76 of cumulative RMDs, the balance is still $757,029.71, essentially untouched, because 5 percent growth covered most of the withdrawals. The uncomfortable one: the RMD is taxed as ordinary income every single year regardless of what you need, and the AGI it generates feeds directly into the Medicare IRMAA surcharge tiers and the taxation of Social Security benefits. A $38,000 RMD landing on top of a $45,000 benefit does not cost 22 percent; it can cost considerably more once the surcharges are counted. The Medicare IRMAA calculator prices that interaction, and the retirement withdrawal calculator tests whether your own spending would have drawn the account faster or slower than the law requires.
The first RMD year has a unique deadline: April 1 of the following year. An owner who turns 73 in 2026 owes $750,000 ÷ 26.5 = $28,301.89, and can legally wait until April 1, 2027 to take it. The trap is arithmetic: every subsequent RMD is due December 31, so delaying the first one stacks two RMDs into a single tax year. In this example the second-year RMD is $29,772.48, and the delay produces $58,074.37 of taxable income in 2027 instead of spreading $28,301.89 into each year. For most households that doubled-up year lands in the same window Social Security begins, the worst possible bracket timing. The delay only pays when income genuinely collapses between the two years, moving the doubled distribution into a far lower bracket. Absent that specific fact pattern, take the first RMD by the first December 31 and let the schedule run clean.
Three levers reduce the forced withdrawal, and all three expire the day RMDs begin. The first is Roth conversion: every dollar moved from traditional to Roth before age 73 permanently exits the RMD base. At the defaults, converting $200,000 years earlier drops this year's RMD from $30,487.80 to $22,357.72, saving $8,130.08 of forced taxable income annually, and the gap widens every year as the divisor falls. The conversion itself is taxable, so the question is the rate you pay now versus the rate you would pay on the RMD stream, which is exactly what the Roth conversion ladder calculator is built to answer. The second lever is the Qualified Charitable Distribution: from age 70½, up to $111,000 in 2026 can go directly from an IRA to a qualified charity, satisfying RMD dollars while never touching taxable income. At the defaults, an $8,000 QCD reduces the taxable RMD to $22,487.80, and it beats deducting a cash gift because the income vanishes entirely. The third is the still-working exception: an employee past RMD age can delay RMDs from the current employer's 401(k), though never from IRAs or old employer plans. What no lever can do is reverse the deadline; the December 31 date is statutory, and the 25 percent excise tax on whatever is left undone is the IRS's way of making the point.
An excise tax of 25 percent of the amount you failed to withdraw, reported on Form 5329. SECURE 2.0 cut the old 50 percent rate in half and added a correction window: if you withdraw the shortfall and file the corrected return within two years, the penalty drops to 10 percent. At this page's defaults, a fully missed RMD of $30,487.80 would cost $7,621.95, or $3,048.78 if corrected inside the window. The IRS can waive the penalty entirely for reasonable error if you take the missing distribution and attach an explanation to Form 5329. In practice the penalty is almost impossible to incur by accident twice: most custodians offer automatic RMD withdrawals, and some now calculate and remit the amount for you.
Roth IRAs never had lifetime RMDs for the original owner. Roth 401(k) and Roth 403(b) accounts did, until SECURE 2.0 eliminated their lifetime RMDs starting in 2024, so the old advice to roll a Roth 401(k) into a Roth IRA purely to escape RMDs is obsolete. The exemption applies only to Roth money: traditional IRA, SEP IRA, SIMPLE IRA, 401(k), 403(b), and 457(b) balances are all subject to RMDs, computed separately per plan but withdrawable in any combination across your IRAs. This two-tier structure is why the size of your pre-tax balances at age 73, not your total net worth, determines the RMD squeeze, and why conversions made in your sixties show up here as permanently smaller required withdrawals.
The law allows it: the first RMD is due April 1 of the year after you reach RMD age, while every later RMD is due December 31. Delaying is usually a tax trap, because taking the first RMD in the following April means two RMDs land in the same tax year. On a $750,000 balance, an owner who turns 73 owes $28,301.89 for the first year; delaying pushes that into the second year on top of the second year's own $29,772.48, so $58,074.37 of taxable income arrives at once, often in the same year Social Security starts. The one scenario where the delay is rational is a taxpayer whose income collapses between the two years, pushing the doubled-up RMD into a much lower bracket. Most people should take the first RMD on schedule by the first December 31.
Almost certainly the Uniform Lifetime Table, Publication 590-B Table III, which this calculator uses. Two alternatives exist. If your sole primary beneficiary is a spouse more than ten years younger than you, Table II, the Joint Life and Last Survivor Expectancy Table, applies and produces smaller RMDs because it spans two lifetimes. If you inherited an account, entirely different rules apply: most non-spouse beneficiaries now fall under the 10-year rule, and those eligible to stretch, such as minor children or spouses, use Table I with a decrement method rather than an annual age lookup. Note also what the Uniform Lifetime Table does not do: the divisor is looked up fresh from your age every year, it does not decrement, and it does not change with your actual health or family history.
You can always withdraw more; the RMD is a floor, not a ceiling. But an excess withdrawal does not carry over: take double the RMD this year and next year's requirement is unchanged. Each year stands alone, calculated from the prior December 31 balance of that year. What does count toward this year's RMD is anything that leaves the account during the year, including a Qualified Charitable Distribution sent directly from an IRA to charity, up to the 2026 limit of $111,000. Withdrawals from one IRA can satisfy the combined RMD of all your IRAs, though employer plans like a 401(k) must be satisfied from that plan itself. The RMD also does not deplete the account the way people fear: at the defaults the first-year RMD is 4.07 percent of the balance, well inside what many retirees spend anyway.
For the core calculation it is exact: the IRS formula is one division, prior December 31 balance divided by the Table III distribution period for your age, and this page uses the official divisors effective since 2022. What it simplifies: the projection assumes a constant growth rate and RMDs taken evenly through each year rather than modeling intra-year sequence, it prices tax at a flat marginal bracket and ignores state income tax, it does not model IRMAA surcharges or the Social Security taxation ripple that large RMDs can trigger, and it does not implement the Joint Life table for a much-younger spouse. Custodians compute the official number from your actual December 31 statement; this page is for planning, including the questions the custodian will never ask, such as what the RMD path does to your bracket over the next decade.
All calculation logic on this page is implemented from the primary documents below. Each one is listed with the figure it supplies, so any rate or threshold in the result can be traced back to its published source.
Contribution limits and plan rules for the current tax year on every page.