IRS Code Section 401(a)(9): RMD Rules, Deadlines, and Penalties

Required minimum distributions, or RMDs, are the amounts the IRS requires you to withdraw each year from most tax-advantaged retirement accounts once you reach age 73. The rule sits in Section 401(a)(9) of the Internal Revenue Code and covers people who turn 73 between 2024 and 2032. Each year’s withdrawal equals your prior year-end account balance divided by an IRS life expectancy factor, and the penalty for taking too little is 25% of the shortfall.¹

Which Accounts Have RMDs

The rules apply to traditional IRAs, SEP IRAs, SIMPLE IRAs, 401(k)s, 403(b)s, 457(b) government plans, and profit-sharing plans.² If you hold money in any of those, RMDs are coming.

Roth IRAs are the big exception. As the original owner of a Roth IRA, you never take RMDs during your lifetime.³ Starting in 2024, designated Roth accounts inside employer plans (Roth 401(k)s and Roth 403(b)s) are also exempt from lifetime RMDs, so the old workaround of rolling a Roth 401(k) into a Roth IRA just to escape distributions is no longer necessary.⁴

Inherited Roth accounts are treated differently. Beneficiaries follow the same post-death distribution timelines as inherited traditional accounts, even though the distributions come out tax-free.⁵

When You Have To Start

Your Required Beginning Date is April 1 of the year after you turn 73. Under SECURE 2.0, the age rises to 75 for people who turn 73 after December 31, 2032, which effectively means anyone born in 1960 or later.¹

Watch out for that April 1 date. It only applies to your first RMD. If you turn 73 in 2025, your first distribution is due by April 1, 2026, but the 2026 RMD is still due by December 31, 2026. Two taxable withdrawals hit the same year and can push you into a higher bracket. Most people avoid the pileup by taking the first RMD during the year they turn 73. Every RMD after the first is due by December 31 of that year.¹

The Still-Working Exception

If you’re still employed past 73 and participate in your current employer’s plan, you can delay RMDs from that specific plan until April 1 of the year after you retire. It only works if you own less than 5% of the business sponsoring the plan.⁴

The exception is narrower than most people assume. It covers only the plan at your current employer. Your IRAs still follow the standard schedule, and so does any 401(k) you left behind at a former job. The plan document itself also has to allow the delay, and not all of them do.¹

How To Calculate the Amount

Take your account balance as of December 31 of the previous year, and divide it by the life expectancy factor the IRS assigns to your age. That’s your minimum for the year. You can always take more, never less.³

Say your traditional IRA held $500,000 on December 31, 2025, and you turn 73 in 2026. Divide $500,000 by 26.5, the Uniform Lifetime Table factor for age 73, and your 2026 RMD is $18,868. At age 80, the factor drops to 20.2, so the same $500,000 balance would produce an RMD of $24,752.⁶ The factor shrinks each year, so the percentage you must withdraw creeps up.

The IRS publishes three life expectancy tables, and which one you use depends on your situation. Most account owners use the Uniform Lifetime Table. It applies to unmarried owners, married owners whose spouse is not more than 10 years younger, and married owners whose spouse is not the sole beneficiary.⁷

If your spouse is the sole beneficiary and is more than 10 years younger, you use the Joint and Last Survivor Table instead. The factors are larger, producing a smaller annual RMD. If your spouse stops being the sole beneficiary at any point during the year, you revert to the Uniform Lifetime Table for that year.¹

The Single Life Expectancy Table applies mainly to certain beneficiaries of inherited accounts who qualify for stretch treatment.¹

Handling Multiple Accounts

If you own several traditional IRAs, calculate the RMD for each account separately, then take the combined total from whichever IRA (or mix of IRAs) you prefer. You don’t have to pull proportionally.⁸ The same aggregation rule applies across multiple 403(b) accounts.

401(k)s are different. Each 401(k) must satisfy its own RMD from its own account. You can’t take one plan’s RMD from another plan, and you can’t use IRA withdrawals to cover a 401(k) RMD or vice versa.⁸

One rule surprises people: RMDs cannot be rolled over into another retirement account. If you withdraw your RMD and try to redeposit it in an IRA, the IRS treats it as an excess contribution and charges a 6% penalty every year it stays in the account.³

Federal Tax Withholding

Because RMDs are classified as nonperiodic payments, your custodian will default to withholding 10% for federal income tax. You can elect a different rate, including 0%, by filing Form W-4R with the payer.⁹ Ten percent often isn’t enough if the RMD pushes you above the 10% bracket, so it’s worth adjusting withholding or making estimated payments to avoid an underpayment penalty.

Inherited Accounts

When an account owner dies, the rules shift depending on who inherits. The IRS sorts beneficiaries into a few categories.

Surviving Spouse

A surviving spouse has the most options. Rolling the inherited account into their own IRA resets everything: no RMDs are owed until the surviving spouse reaches age 73 (or 75).⁵ Alternatively, the spouse can keep it as an inherited IRA and take distributions based on their own life expectancy. If the original owner died before their Required Beginning Date, the surviving spouse can wait to start inherited-account RMDs until the year the deceased would have reached that date.

Eligible Designated Beneficiaries

A narrow group qualifies to stretch distributions over the beneficiary’s own life expectancy instead of the 10-year timeline. Eligible designated beneficiaries are the surviving spouse, a minor child of the account owner, a disabled individual, a chronically ill individual, and any individual not more than 10 years younger than the deceased (a sibling close in age, for example).⁵

For the minor-child rule, the IRS’s 2024 final regulations set the age of majority at 21, not the state legal age of 18. At 21, the 10-year rule kicks in for the remaining balance. Only children of the deceased owner qualify. Grandchildren, nieces, and nephews don’t, even if they’re minors.¹⁰

Everyone Else and the 10-Year Rule

Most non-spouse beneficiaries, including adult children, fall here. The entire inherited account must be emptied by the end of the 10th calendar year following the year the owner died.⁵

Whether you also owe annual RMDs during those 10 years depends on when the owner died relative to their Required Beginning Date. If the owner died on or after that date, annual distributions are required in years one through nine, with whatever remains distributed in year ten. The 2024 final regulations made this explicit.¹⁰ If the owner died before their Required Beginning Date, no annual RMDs are required during the 10-year window; the account just needs to be fully distributed by the end of year ten.

When a retirement account passes to an estate, a charity, or a trust that doesn’t meet the IRS see-through requirements, the timelines are generally shorter. If the owner died before their Required Beginning Date, the account must be emptied by the end of the fifth calendar year after death. If they died on or after that date, distributions come out over the deceased owner’s remaining single life expectancy.¹¹

Using Charitable Giving To Satisfy an RMD

If you plan to donate to charity anyway, a qualified charitable distribution (QCD) is one of the most tax-efficient tools available. A QCD is a direct transfer from your traditional IRA to a qualifying charity. It satisfies your RMD but is excluded from your taxable income, which beats taking the RMD, paying tax, and donating the after-tax amount.³

QCDs are available starting at age 70½, earlier than the RMD age of 73. The maximum annual QCD for 2026 is $111,000 per person, adjusted for inflation. Because the QCD never touches your adjusted gross income, it can also keep you under thresholds for Medicare premium surcharges and Social Security taxation.

The transfer has to go directly from the IRA custodian to the charity. Money that lands in your personal account first, even if you forward it the same day, does not count. Get a written acknowledgment from the charity before filing your return that confirms the date, amount, and that you received nothing of value in return. QCDs cannot go to donor-advised funds or private foundations.

What Happens If You Miss an RMD

If you take less than the required amount by the December 31 deadline, the IRS imposes a 25% excise tax on the shortfall, reported on Form 5329.³ On a $20,000 shortfall, that’s $5,000. It’s one of the harshest penalties in the tax code for what’s often an oversight.

The penalty drops to 10% if you fix it inside a correction window that runs through the end of the second tax year after the year the RMD was due. To qualify, you have to actually take the missed distribution and file Form 5329 reflecting the 10% tax before the window closes.³

You can also ask the IRS to waive the penalty entirely by showing the shortfall came from a reasonable error and that you’ve taken steps to correct it. A custodian that failed to process a distribution you requested, or a serious illness that kept you from managing your accounts, is the kind of situation the IRS has in mind. Attach an explanation to Form 5329.³ The IRS grants most waivers when the mistake is genuine and the money has since been withdrawn. Documenting the timeline carefully matters more than how the letter is worded.

1
Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Topics – Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs)
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eCFR. 26 CFR 1.401(a)(9)-1 – Minimum Distribution Requirement in General
3
Internal Revenue Service. Publication 590-B, Distributions from Individual Retirement Arrangements (IRAs)
4
Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Plan and IRA Required Minimum Distributions FAQs
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Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Topics – Beneficiary
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Internal Revenue Service. Publication 590-B, Distributions from Individual Retirement Arrangements (IRAs) – Section: Appendix B
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Internal Revenue Service. Required Minimum Distribution Worksheets
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Internal Revenue Service. RMD Comparison Chart (IRAs vs. Defined Contribution Plans)
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Internal Revenue Service. 2026 Form W-4R
10
Federal Register. Required Minimum Distributions
11
Internal Revenue Service. Internal Revenue Bulletin 2024-33