Required Minimum Distribution Rules for IRA Beneficiaries

If you inherited an IRA, the required minimum distribution rules for IRA beneficiaries depend almost entirely on who you are to the person who died. A surviving spouse has the widest set of options. A small group of close or dependent beneficiaries can spread withdrawals across their own life expectancy. Everyone else has ten years to empty the account, and in many cases must take a minimum amount each year along the way. Getting your category right is the first step, because it decides your deadline, whether annual withdrawals are required, and how much tax you’ll owe in any given year.

Which Beneficiary Category You Fall Into

The IRS sorts every inheritor into one of three groups, and your group sets your entire timeline.¹

Eligible designated beneficiaries (EDBs) get the longest payout, stretched over their own life expectancy. You qualify as an EDB if you are the surviving spouse, a minor child of the account owner (not a grandchild), disabled or chronically ill as defined under the Internal Revenue Code, or not more than ten years younger than the deceased owner.

A minor child keeps EDB status only until age 21. At that point the 10-year clock starts, and the account must be emptied within ten years from that birthday. Disabled and chronically ill beneficiaries can’t self-certify; they need a licensed health care practitioner’s certification as of the date of the owner’s death. A beneficiary who was already receiving Social Security disability benefits or Supplemental Security Income at the time of the owner’s death qualifies automatically.

Non-eligible designated beneficiaries are most other individual inheritors: adult children, grandchildren, siblings, friends, and anyone else named on the beneficiary form who doesn’t fit an EDB exception. This group is subject to the 10-year rule.²

Non-designated beneficiaries are estates, charities, and most trusts that don’t qualify as “see-through” trusts. The SECURE Act’s 10-year rule doesn’t apply to them. If the owner died before their Required Beginning Date, the entire account must be emptied within five years. If the owner died after their Required Beginning Date, distributions run over the owner’s remaining life expectancy. A see-through trust follows the rules for its underlying beneficiaries; with multiple beneficiaries and no separate shares, distributions follow the oldest beneficiary’s life expectancy.

The 10-Year Rule

If the owner died in 2020 or later and you’re a non-eligible designated beneficiary, the account must be fully distributed by December 31 of the tenth calendar year after the owner’s death. What happens inside those ten years turns on a single question: had the owner already reached their Required Beginning Date?

The Required Beginning Date is April 1 of the year after the IRA owner turns 73.³ The age rises to 75 for individuals born in 1960 or later, starting in 2033. For 2026, the age is still 73.

If the Owner Died Before Their Required Beginning Date

No annual distributions are required in years one through nine. The account can sit untouched and grow, and you can withdraw the entire balance in year ten. You can also take partial withdrawals along the way, in any combination, as long as the balance is zero by the tenth-year deadline.

If the Owner Died On or After Their Required Beginning Date

You must take annual RMDs during years one through nine and empty whatever remains in year ten. Skipping a year is not allowed.⁴

The IRS waived penalties for beneficiaries who missed these annual distributions in 2021 through 2024 while the final SECURE Act regulations were pending.⁵ That grace period is over. Starting with the 2025 calendar year, annual RMDs are required when the owner died after their Required Beginning Date.

The Life Expectancy Stretch for EDBs

If you qualify as an EDB, you can stretch withdrawals over your own life expectancy instead of squeezing them into ten years. Annual distributions begin in the calendar year after the owner’s death. Each year’s amount is the prior year-end account balance divided by your remaining life expectancy factor from IRS Table I, the Single Life Expectancy Table.⁴

The stretch lasts only while you remain an EDB. When a minor child turns 21, the stretch ends and a fresh 10-year window begins. For a disabled or chronically ill beneficiary, the stretch can continue for life.⁶

Surviving Spouse Options

A surviving spouse has three paths, and the right one depends on age, income needs, and whether penalty-free access matters.

Roll the IRA Into Your Own

The most common choice is to move the assets into an IRA in your own name. Everything resets: you follow your own RMD schedule starting at 73, you can name new beneficiaries, and you can make contributions like any owner.³ The catch: if you’re under 59½ and need to withdraw money, the 10% early withdrawal penalty applies to your own IRA. It does not apply to distributions taken from an inherited IRA held in beneficiary form, because the tax code exempts distributions made to a beneficiary after the owner’s death.⁷ A rollover typically works best for a spouse who won’t need the money before 59½.

Keep It as an Inherited IRA and Elect Owner Treatment

Under SECURE 2.0 rules effective in 2024, a surviving spouse who keeps the account as an inherited IRA can elect to be treated as the deceased owner for RMD purposes. If the owner died before their Required Beginning Date, the election is automatic.⁸

With this election, RMDs are delayed until the year the deceased owner would have turned 73. When they begin, they’re calculated using the Uniform Lifetime Table (the more favorable table owners use), not the Single Life Expectancy Table. The account stays in inherited form, so the 10% early withdrawal penalty never applies, regardless of the spouse’s age. The spouse can still roll over to their own IRA later. If the spouse is older than the deceased owner and the owner died after their Required Beginning Date, the RMD is the greater of the spouse’s Uniform Lifetime factor or the owner’s remaining life expectancy.

The inherited IRA route usually wins for a spouse under 59½ who might need penalty-free access, or when the deceased was younger and delayed RMDs offer a planning benefit. A rollover is the cleaner long-term move for a spouse with their own retirement savings who wants simplicity.

Inherited Roth IRAs

Inherited Roth IRAs follow the same distribution timelines as inherited traditional IRAs. A non-eligible designated beneficiary is still on the 10-year rule. An EDB can still stretch. A surviving spouse can still roll over.¹

What changes is the tax. Withdrawals of contributions are always tax-free. Withdrawals of earnings are tax-free if the Roth had been open for at least five years at the time of the owner’s death; if not, earnings may be taxable.

Because Roth distributions are generally tax-free, the strategic math flips. With a traditional inherited IRA, many beneficiaries spread withdrawals across the 10-year window to avoid bracket creep. With an inherited Roth, timing doesn’t affect the tax bill, so waiting until year ten maximizes tax-free growth. One caveat: when the owner died after their Required Beginning Date and the beneficiary is a non-eligible designated beneficiary, the annual RMD requirement still technically applies inside the 10-year window.

How to Calculate the Annual Amount

The math is the same idea across scenarios: prior-year December 31 balance divided by a life expectancy factor. What differs is which table and which age.

Life Expectancy Method (EDBs Other Than Surviving Spouses)

Use IRS Table I, the Single Life Expectancy Table. Find your factor for your age in the year after the owner’s death. That’s your starting divisor. Each following year, subtract one from the prior year’s factor. A starting factor of 40.0 becomes 39.0, then 38.0.⁴

A surviving spouse who keeps the account as an inherited IRA and uses the SECURE 2.0 election uses the Uniform Lifetime Table (Table III), recalculated each year at the spouse’s current age. That produces smaller required distributions than the Single Life Table.

Annual RMDs Inside the 10-Year Window

When the 10-year rule applies and the owner died after their Required Beginning Date, the annual distributions in years one through nine use the owner’s life expectancy factor from Table I, based on the owner’s age in the year of death and reduced by one each year after.⁹ The year-ten distribution is whatever balance is left.

When the owner died before their Required Beginning Date, no annual minimums apply during years one through nine. You choose your own pace as long as the account is empty by year ten.

The Year-of-Death RMD

If the owner died partway through the year without taking their full RMD for that year, the beneficiary must complete it. This is the owner’s RMD, calculated on the owner’s age and factor, not the beneficiary’s. If the owner had already taken the full amount for the year before dying, no further RMD is owed for that calendar year.⁹

Multiple Inherited IRAs From the Same Person

If you inherited more than one traditional IRA from the same person, calculate the RMD separately for each account. Once you have the total, you can take it from any one of those inherited accounts or split it across them. You can’t aggregate inherited IRAs from different deceased owners, and you can’t satisfy an inherited IRA’s RMD from your own non-inherited IRA.

If You Are a Successor Beneficiary

When a beneficiary dies before the account is emptied, the next inheritor is a successor beneficiary, and the rules are stricter regardless of the successor’s relationship to anyone involved.⁶ If the original beneficiary was an EDB stretching over their lifetime, the successor gets ten years from the original beneficiary’s death, not a continued stretch. If the original beneficiary was already required to take annual RMDs, the successor keeps taking them inside the new 10-year window. If the original beneficiary was already on the 10-year rule, the successor inherits whatever time is left on that clock, not a fresh ten years. Any RMD the original beneficiary hadn’t yet taken for the year of death falls to the successor.

What Happens If You Miss an RMD

Missing an RMD triggers a 25% excise tax on the shortfall (the difference between what you were required to take and what you actually withdrew).³ You can drop it to 10% by fixing the error inside the IRS “correction window.” To qualify, you have to withdraw the missed amount and file a return reflecting the reduced 10% tax. In practice, the window gives most people roughly two years from the missed distribution to catch and correct the mistake.¹⁰

If the miss was a genuine mistake, you can ask the IRS to waive the tax entirely. File Form 5329 for the year of the missed distribution, enter “RC” for reasonable cause on the appropriate line, and attach a written explanation of what happened and what you did to fix it. Each request is reviewed individually.¹¹

SECURE 2.0 also added a three-year statute of limitations for this excise tax. The clock starts on the unextended due date of the return for the year of the missed distribution. After three years, the IRS can no longer assess the penalty for that year, and you don’t have to file Form 5329 to start the clock.

How Distributions Are Taxed and Reported

Distributions from an inherited traditional IRA are ordinary income in the year you receive them, the same treatment the original owner would have faced. Your IRA custodian reports the distribution on Form 1099-R using distribution code 4 (death benefit), which flags the payment as coming from a deceased owner’s account.¹²

Inherited Roth IRA distributions are generally not taxable, with the exception of earnings from accounts less than five years old. State treatment varies; some states tax inherited IRA distributions in full, others offer partial exclusions, and some have no income tax at all. Because a large year-ten balance can produce a heavy single-year tax bill on a traditional inherited IRA, spreading withdrawals across the 10-year window is one of the most common ways to manage the total tax cost.

1
Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Topics – Beneficiary
2
Internal Revenue Service. Publication 590-B – Distributions from Individual Retirement Arrangements
3
Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Topics – Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs)
4
Internal Revenue Service. Publication 590-B – Distributions from Individual Retirement Arrangements
5
Internal Revenue Service. Notice 2024-35 – Certain Required Minimum Distributions for 2024
6
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 401 – Qualified Pension, Profit-Sharing, and Stock Bonus Plans
7
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 72 – Annuities; Certain Proceeds of Endowment and Life Insurance Contracts
8
Internal Revenue Service. Internal Revenue Bulletin 2024-33
9
Internal Revenue Service. Required Minimum Distributions for IRA Beneficiaries
10
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 4974 – Excise Tax on Certain Accumulations in Qualified Retirement Plans
11
Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Form 5329 – Additional Taxes on Qualified Plans (Including IRAs) and Other Tax-Favored Accounts
12
Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Forms 1099-R and 5498