Required Minimum Distributions in 2026: What Retirees Must Withdraw, and When

The government has been patient with your retirement savings for a very long time, but patience comes with a deadline. If you own a traditional IRA and you reach your required withdrawal age, the Internal Revenue Service expects you to start taking money out whether you need it or not.

Picture a retiree who turns 73 in 2026 and holds 500,000 dollars of entirely pretax money in a traditional IRA on December 31, 2025. Using the Uniform Lifetime Table, that person has a first required withdrawal of about 18,868 dollars and may take it any time in 2026 or wait until as late as April 1, 2027.

The rule is called a required minimum distribution, and the word required is the one that bites. Miss the deadline and the penalty is painful. Here is how it works, in plain language, with the numbers that matter this year.

Why the Government Wants Its Money Now

A traditional IRA or 401(k) is a deal you made years ago. In most cases you put money in before paying tax on it, the account grew without a yearly tax bill, and the understanding was that the tax would come due someday.

Someday has a name now, and it is the required minimum distribution. The IRS does not want you to shelter that money forever and hand it untouched to your heirs, so it requires you to withdraw a slice each year and pay regular income tax on it.

The rules in force today come from the SECURE 2.0 Act, which Congress passed in late 2022. That law raised the starting age and softened the penalty, but it did not change the basic bargain.

Money that went in untaxed must eventually come out and be taxed. One wrinkle matters here. If you ever made nondeductible contributions, you have what the IRS calls basis, and that after-tax portion comes back out tax-free, so part of each distribution is not taxable.

The examples in this column assume an account funded entirely with pretax money. The rule covers traditional IRAs, rollover IRAs, and most workplace plans such as 401(k) and 403(b) accounts, but not a Roth IRA during your lifetime.

The Age That Matters Is 73

Under current law the required withdrawals begin at age 73 for anyone born between 1951 and 1959. If you were born in 1953, you turn 73 in 2026, which means this is the first year the rule touches you.

For people born in 1960 or later, the starting age rises to 75, so that group gets a few more years of peace. There was no dramatic new law for 2026. What makes this year feel new is simply that a fresh group of savers has crossed the age-73 line and must act for the first time.

Before SECURE 2.0 the starting age was 72, and before that it was 70 and a half. Workplace plans carry one useful exception. If you are still working past your required age and your employer's plan allows it, you may generally delay withdrawals from that current employer's plan until you retire, provided you do not own more than 5 percent of the company.

This exception covers only the plan where you still work. It does not reach your IRAs or old plans from past jobs, which follow the normal schedule. Knowing your own starting age is the whole game.

The April 1 Trap in Your First Year

The IRS gives you one small kindness in your first year and then sets a trap inside it. For your very first required withdrawal, you are allowed to wait until April 1 of the following year.

So a person who turns 73 during 2026 may take that first withdrawal any time in 2026, or delay it as late as April 1, 2027. That sounds generous until you read the fine print.

The April 1 grace period moves only the first withdrawal. It does not move the regular December 31 deadline for the second one. If you push your first withdrawal into 2027, you will take two required distributions in that single tax year, the delayed 2026 amount plus the normal 2027 amount.

Stacking two withdrawals into one year can shove you into a higher tax bracket, raise the share of your Social Security that gets taxed, and trigger higher Medicare premiums. For many retirees the safer move is to take the first withdrawal in the year you reach your required age and keep each year clean.

After the first year, every withdrawal is simply due by December 31.

How the Amount Is Figured

The math is friendlier than you might fear. Take your account balance on December 31 of the prior year and divide it by a number the IRS assigns to your age. For most people that number comes from the Uniform Lifetime Table, which lives in IRS Publication 590-B.

At age 73 the divisor is 26.5, which works out to about 3.77 percent of the balance. So a 300,000 dollar balance of entirely pretax money, divided by 26.5, gives a required withdrawal of roughly 11,321 dollars.

The divisor shrinks as you age, so the percentage you must withdraw slowly climbs. At 75 the divisor is 24.6, at 80 it is 20.2, and at 90 it is 12.2. There is an important exception to which table you use.

If your spouse is your sole beneficiary and is more than 10 years younger than you, you use the Joint Life and Last Survivor Expectancy Table, which the IRS lists as Table II. That table gives larger divisors and smaller required amounts.

If you own several traditional IRAs, you add up the required amount from each but may take the total from any one of them. Workplace 401(k) accounts generally must be figured and withdrawn separately.

The 25 Percent Penalty for Missing It

For decades the penalty for forgetting a required withdrawal was brutal. The IRS could take 50 percent of the amount you failed to withdraw. SECURE 2.0 cut that in half. The penalty is now a 25 percent excise tax on the shortfall.

It can drop to 10 percent, but only if you both take the missed amount and file a return reflecting the excise tax within the correction window. That window generally runs to the end of the second tax year after the penalty is imposed, but it can close earlier, on the date the IRS mails a notice of deficiency or assesses the tax, whichever comes first.

If you were supposed to withdraw 10,000 dollars and took nothing, the standard penalty is 2,500 dollars on top of the regular income tax. There is also a separate path when the slip was honest.

If the shortfall was due to a reasonable error and you are taking reasonable steps to fix it, you may take the missed amount and file IRS Form 5329 with a short letter asking the IRS to waive the penalty. The IRS can grant that waiver, but approval is not guaranteed.

The lesson is not to panic but to act, because the longer a missed withdrawal sits, the weaker your case becomes.

Give It to Charity and Skip the Tax

If you give to a church, a food bank, or another charity anyway, there is a quiet way to satisfy the required withdrawal and owe no income tax on it. It is called a qualified charitable distribution.

Once you reach age 70 and a half, you may have money go directly from your IRA to a qualified 501(c)(3) charity, so it never counts as taxable income, and it still counts toward your required withdrawal for the year. For 2026 the limit is 111,000 dollars per person, up from 108,000 dollars in 2025, under IRS Notice 2025-67.

A married couple with separate IRAs can each give up to that amount from their own accounts. The rule that trips people up is not about who carries the check. The check simply must be payable to the charity, not to you.

Under IRS guidance you may have your custodian issue a check made payable to the charity and then hand or mail it to the charity yourself, and it still counts. What you cannot do is take the money as a payment to yourself first and then write your own check.

For a retiree who takes the standard deduction, this is one of the most efficient ways left to give, and it can ease Medicare premiums and the tax on Social Security.

If you remember one thing, remember your own starting year. The whole system turns on the date you reach your applicable required withdrawal age, and every deadline and dollar figure follows from it.

My practical advice is to put the withdrawal on autopilot. Most custodians will let you set up an automatic distribution each year, calculated for you, so you never face the excise tax for simple forgetfulness.

Pick a month, perhaps November, so there is still time to fix any surprise before the year ends. If you are still working and do not own more than 5 percent of the company, ask whether your current employer's plan lets you wait.

If you give to charity, ask about sending the money straight from the IRA. And when two withdrawals threaten to collide in one year, spend an hour with a tax preparer.

Sources

• Internal Revenue Service, Publication 590-B, Distributions from Individual Retirement Arrangements (2025)
• SECURE 2.0 Act of 2022, Division T of the Consolidated Appropriations Act (2022)
• Internal Revenue Service, Notice 2025-67, Internal Revenue Bulletin 2025-49 (2025)
• Internal Revenue Service, Notice 2007-7, Qualified Charitable Distributions (2007)
• FINRA, Required Minimum Distributions: Know Your Deadlines (2026)
• Kiplinger, Turned 73 Last Year? Your First RMD May Be Due April 1 (2026)