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 excise tax is generally 25% of the shortfall: the required amount minus qualifying distributions received by its deadline, not the whole account balance. For a $10,000 RMD with $7,000 taken on time, the $3,000 shortfall gives $750 at 25%, or $300 at 10% if the reduced-rate conditions are met. The result card assumes the entire displayed RMD was missed; it does not read your withdrawal history.

Correction and a waiver are different

To qualify for the 10% rate, receive the missed amount from the plan concerned and submit a return reflecting the tax within the correction window. The window ends at the earliest of the IRS mailing a deficiency notice, assessing the tax, or the last day of the second taxable year beginning after the end of the taxable year in which the tax is imposed. For a deferred first RMD, that tax year can differ from the distribution year. A late correction does not become an on-time distribution.

The IRS may waive some or all of the tax for reasonable error when reasonable steps are being taken to fix it. File Form 5329 with the explanation required by its instructions; a waiver is a request, not automatic relief. Use the form version for the relevant tax year. Shortfall, reduced-rate and correction-window guidance checked 8 October 2026 against IRS Form 5329 instructions, Part IX.

Inherited accounts follow other rules, and this calculator is for owners. Use the inherited IRA RMD calculator for the supported beneficiary cases. 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.