Required minimum distribution calculator
What the IRS makes you take out each year, what it grows into, and why the share rises whether you need the money or not.
- Life expectancy factor
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- Share of the balance
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- Required by age 85
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- Total taken through 95
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- Balance remaining at 95
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What this is actually calculating.
A required minimum distribution is the amount the IRS obliges you to withdraw from a traditional IRA or 401(k) each year once you reach the start age. The sum is your balance on 31 December of the prior year divided by a life expectancy factor from the Uniform Lifetime Table. Nothing about your spending enters into it.
The factor shrinks every year, so the required share of the account rises: about 3.8 percent at 73, roughly 5 percent by 80, over 8 percent by 90. That is why RMDs are a tax problem rather than an income problem. The money comes out and is taxed as ordinary income whether you wanted it or not.
The parts that decide the answer.
The start age has moved twice
SECURE 2.0 set it at 73 for anyone born from 1951 through 1959, and 75 for anyone born in 1960 or later, so the first distributions at 75 fall in 2035 rather than the 2033 date the statute reads from. The 1959 birth year is still unsettled in the regulations. A first distribution can also be deferred to April 1 of the following year, at the price of taking two in one tax year.
Missing one is expensive
The penalty is 25 percent of the shortfall, reduced to 10 percent if corrected promptly. It is one of the harshest penalties in the code and it is entirely avoidable.
Roth IRAs are outside this
Roth IRAs have no required distributions during your lifetime, and since 2024 neither do Roth 401(k)s. That is a large part of the case for converting before RMDs begin.
A much younger spouse changes the table
If your sole beneficiary is a spouse more than ten years younger, you use the Joint and Last Survivor Table and take less. This calculator uses the ordinary table.
Before you rely on it.
Can I take more than the minimum?
Yes. It is a floor, not a ceiling. Taking more is often sensible in a low-income year, though the excess does not count toward a future year's requirement.
Do I need one calculation per account?
IRAs are calculated per account but the total can be taken from any one of them. Employer plans generally must each satisfy their own, so a 401(k) left behind at an old job needs its own distribution.
Can I avoid the tax entirely?
Giving the distribution directly to charity as a qualified charitable distribution satisfies the requirement without the money becoming income. That is the QCD calculator.
About this calculator.
An illustration, not advice
This is an educational illustration, not investment, tax, or legal advice, and not a recommendation or projection of any particular result. It uses only the assumptions you enter.
Real returns are not this smooth
Where a return is involved it is treated as constant, which no real portfolio is. Actual results will differ, and a sequence of poor early returns can change an outcome substantially even when the average holds.
Nothing you type leaves your browser
Every calculation runs on your own machine. Nothing you enter is transmitted or stored, and none of it reaches me unless you ask for a PDF and give me your details.
Talk to your CPA and attorney before relying on any of it.See all twelve calculators
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A branded summary of the figures you entered, what they mean, and the assumptions behind them.
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