RMD Calculator

Once you reach your RMD age, you must take a minimum amount out of traditional IRAs (including SEP and SIMPLE IRAs) and workplace plans such as 401(k), 403(b) and 457(b) plans every year. Each year's RMD is the account balance on December 31 of the year before, divided by the factor for your age on your birthday that year in the IRS Uniform Lifetime Table.

Your first RMD is for the year you reach your RMD age, and it can wait until April 1 of the next year. Every later RMD, including the second, is due by December 31 of its own year, so waiting means two RMDs in one year. The second is worked out on the December 31 balance, which still includes the first if it had not been taken yet.

If your spouse is the sole beneficiary for the whole year and more than 10 years younger, the Joint and Last Survivor Table applies instead. Its factor is larger, so the RMD is smaller.

You can always take more than the RMD, but the extra does not count toward later years. RMDs cannot be rolled over into another retirement account. A qualified charitable distribution from an IRA counts toward the RMD.

The part of an RMD you did not take owes a 25% excise tax. It drops to 10% if you take the missed amount and file a return reflecting the tax within the correction window, which ends at the latest on the last day of the second year after the year of the missed RMD. The IRS can waive the tax for a reasonable error you are fixing; the tax and any waiver request go on Form 5329.

Inherited accounts follow other rules, and this calculator is for owners. A beneficiary who is not the owner's spouse, the owner's minor child, disabled, chronically ill or not more than 10 years younger than the owner must empty the account by the end of the 10th year after the year of death. If the owner had already reached the required beginning date, yearly RMDs are also due in years 1 to 9; the IRS waived the tax on missed ones through 2024.

Money in a Roth IRA has no RMDs while you are alive, so converting before your RMD age shrinks the balance future RMDs are worked out on. Each conversion is taxed as income in the year you make it; the Roth conversion calculator shows how much. To see how long your savings last once withdrawals start, use the retirement withdrawal calculator; for withdrawals before 59½, the 72(t) calculator.