Can I Donate My RMD to Charity Tax-Free? QCD Rules and Reporting

If you’re at least 70½, you can donate your required minimum distribution to charity tax-free by having your IRA custodian send the money directly to a qualifying public charity. This is called a qualified charitable distribution, or QCD. For 2026, you can exclude up to $111,000 per person from your taxable income this way, and every dollar of the QCD counts against your RMD.¹ The exclusion works whether you itemize or take the standard deduction, which is why it usually beats withdrawing the money and claiming a charitable deduction on your return.

Age and Account Rules

You must be 70½ on the date the distribution actually leaves your IRA. Not the date you request it, and not the end of the tax year.² Because RMDs themselves don’t start until age 73 under SECURE 2.0, you can begin making QCDs up to three years before you’re required to take any distribution at all.

The money has to come from an IRA. Traditional IRAs and rollover IRAs are the usual source. Inherited IRAs work too, as long as the beneficiary is 70½ or older.³ SEP and SIMPLE IRAs qualify only if they’re inactive, meaning no employer contribution was made for the plan year ending within the tax year of the QCD.⁴

Employer plans like 401(k)s, 403(b)s, and 457(b)s cannot fund a QCD directly. If you want to use those dollars, you’d have to roll them into a traditional IRA first. Roth IRAs are technically eligible, but Roth distributions are already tax-free in most cases, so running them through the QCD process rarely helps.

One detail catches people: only the taxable portion of your IRA can flow through as a QCD. If your traditional IRA contains nondeductible (after-tax) contributions, those dollars don’t qualify, because they wouldn’t have been taxable coming out anyway.²

How the RMD Offset Works

A QCD counts toward your required minimum distribution dollar for dollar. If your RMD is $20,000 and you make a $20,000 QCD, your entire RMD is satisfied and none of it lands on your tax return. Donate less than the full RMD and you’ll take the remainder as an ordinary taxable withdrawal.

Order matters. The IRS applies a first-money-out rule: any QCD you make during the year counts first toward your RMD before other distributions do. So if you take a regular taxable distribution early in the year that already covers your full RMD, a later QCD will still be excluded from income, but it won’t reduce the RMD that’s already been satisfied. Do the QCD before you take any other IRA withdrawals for the year.

For married couples, each spouse who is 70½ or older can make QCDs from their own IRAs, up to $111,000 each. The limit is per person, not per couple.

Which Charities Qualify

The recipient must be a public charity eligible for tax-deductible contributions under Section 170(b)(1)(A). That covers churches, hospitals, schools, and publicly supported foundations.⁵ Several popular charitable vehicles are ruled out:

Donor-advised funds cannot receive QCDs, even though DAF contributions are otherwise tax-deductible.²
Supporting organizations described in Section 509(a)(3) are not eligible.
Private non-operating foundations do not meet the public charity requirement.

You also cannot receive anything of value in return. A dinner, a tote bag, or any other benefit reduces the QCD amount by its fair market value. The cleanest approach is to tell the charity up front that you don’t want any goods or services in exchange.

A separate SECURE 2.0 provision lets you make a one-time QCD of up to $55,000 (for 2026) to a charitable remainder trust or charitable gift annuity, which pays you income for life with the remainder going to charity. It can be used only once in your lifetime and counts against the same $111,000 annual cap.⁶

How to Make the Transfer

The transfer has to go directly from your IRA custodian to the charity. If you withdraw the money to your own bank account and then write a check, the distribution becomes ordinary taxable income no matter what you do with it afterward.

Ask your IRA custodian for a qualified charitable distribution. Most have a dedicated form. You’ll provide the charity’s name, address, and tax ID number.
You can split a QCD among multiple charities, as long as the yearly total stays within $111,000.
The distribution must leave your IRA by December 31 to count for that tax year. Start early to allow for processing.
Get a written acknowledgment from each charity confirming the amount and that no goods or services were provided. Keep it with your tax records.

The Post-70½ Deductible Contribution Trap

Deductible IRA contributions made after you turn 70½ reduce the tax-free portion of your QCDs, and this reduction carries forward year after year. The offset equals the total of those post-70½ deductible contributions, minus amounts that already reduced a prior year’s QCD exclusion.⁴

Say you contributed $4,000 to a deductible IRA after age 70½ and then make a $6,500 QCD. Only $2,500 of the QCD is excluded from income. The other $4,000 is taxable. Publication 590-B has a QCD Adjustment Worksheet for the exact math.² If you plan to give through QCDs, think twice before making deductible IRA contributions after 70½.

Why the Exclusion Beats a Deduction

The headline benefit is that the QCD amount never enters your adjusted gross income. Because AGI drives so many other tax calculations, the downstream effects often matter more than the immediate income savings.

You Don’t Have to Itemize

The 2026 standard deduction is $16,100 for single filers and $32,200 for married couples filing jointly, with additional amounts for those 65 and older.⁷ A regular charitable donation only helps if you itemize, and most retirees don’t. A QCD sidesteps that problem entirely, which is why it usually outperforms the withdraw-and-donate approach.

Social Security and Medicare

Up to 85% of Social Security benefits can become taxable once your combined income (AGI plus tax-exempt interest plus half your benefit) crosses $25,000 for single filers or $32,000 for joint filers.⁸ Keeping the QCD out of AGI can meaningfully shrink the taxable share of your benefits if you’re near those thresholds.

Medicare’s Income-Related Monthly Adjustment Amount adds surcharges to Part B and Part D premiums when modified AGI passes certain levels. In 2026, single filers cross the first tier at $109,000 in modified AGI ($218,000 for joint filers), where the Part B premium jumps from $202.90 to $284.10 per month.⁹ IRMAA uses the tax return from two years prior, so a QCD in 2026 affects 2028 premiums.

No Double Deduction

You can’t exclude the same dollars from income under the QCD rules and claim them as an itemized charitable deduction. The statute is explicit: an amount excluded from gross income doesn’t count toward your Section 170 deduction.² If you itemize and give more than your QCD, only the non-QCD giving generates a deduction.

Reporting the QCD on Your Return

Your custodian will send a Form 1099-R showing the full IRA distribution in Box 1. Beginning with the 2025 tax year, custodians identify QCDs using new Code Y in Box 7.¹⁰

On Form 1040, put the full distribution on Line 4a. Enter only the taxable portion (the total minus the QCD) on Line 4b, and check the QCD box on Line 4c.¹¹ Hang on to the charity’s written acknowledgment, the 1099-R, and any confirmation that the transfer went directly from custodian to charity. Those records back up the exclusion if the IRS asks.

One last check: some states don’t fully conform to the federal QCD exclusion, so the donated amount may still be taxable on your state return. Look up your state’s treatment before you assume the savings extend past your federal return.

1
Internal Revenue Service. 2026 Amounts Relating to Retirement Plans and IRAs, as Adjusted for Changes in Cost-of-Living (Notice 2025-67)
2
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 408 – Individual Retirement Accounts
3
Internal Revenue Service. Seniors Can Reduce Their Tax Burden by Donating to Charity Through Their IRA
4
Internal Revenue Service. Publication 590-B (2025), Distributions From Individual Retirement Arrangements (IRAs)
5
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 170 – Charitable, Etc., Contributions and Gifts
6
Internal Revenue Service. 26 USC 408 – Individual Retirement Accounts – Section: One-Time Election for Qualified Charitable Distribution to Split-Interest Entity
7
Internal Revenue Service. IRS Releases Tax Inflation Adjustments for Tax Year 2026
8
Social Security Administration. Must I Pay Taxes on Social Security Benefits?
9
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. 2026 Medicare Parts A and B Premiums and Deductibles
10
Internal Revenue Service. 2025 Instructions for Forms 1099-R and 5498
11
Internal Revenue Service. 2025 Instruction 1040