Required Minimum Distribution (RMD) Calculator

The withdrawal you cannot skip, no matter what the market is doing

Traditional IRAs and 401(k)s defer tax on contributions and growth for decades, and required minimum distributions are how the tax code eventually collects on that deferral. Once you reach the RMD age, the IRS requires you to withdraw — and pay ordinary income tax on — a minimum percentage of the account every year, regardless of whether the market is up, down, or whether you actually need the money.

The calculation itself is short: take your prior year-end balance and divide it by a life expectancy factor from the IRS Uniform Lifetime Table, keyed to your age. What surprises most people is not the formula — it is how quickly the required percentage climbs as the factor shrinks with age.

Why the required percentage keeps rising

The life expectancy factor decreases every year — at 73 it’s 26.5, by 85 it’s down to 16.0, and by 95 it’s just 8.9 — which means the required withdrawal percentage roughly doubles between your early seventies and your mid-nineties, even if the account balance never grows an additional dollar.

This is by design: the table assumes the account should be drawn down over the account holder’s remaining actuarial lifespan, so the required fraction necessarily accelerates as that assumed remaining lifespan shortens. A retiree with a large traditional balance who lives well into their nineties will eventually be required to withdraw a meaningfully larger share of the account each year than they were at 73 — worth planning around rather than discovering at 90.

The excise tax makes missing a deadline expensive

Failing to take an RMD, or taking less than required, triggers an IRS excise tax on the shortfall — the gap between what should have been withdrawn and what actually was. This penalty was reduced from a much steeper historical rate but remains substantial, with a further reduction available if the mistake is corrected within a specified window.

The deadline itself has one wrinkle worth knowing: your very first RMD can be delayed until April 1 of the year after you reach the RMD age, but every subsequent RMD is due by December 31 of that year — meaning if you delay the first one, you could owe two RMDs in the same calendar year, with the resulting tax bill landing all at once. Whether to take the first RMD in the year you reach the age or delay it is a genuine planning decision worth thinking through rather than defaulting into.

Aggregating IRA withdrawals versus separate 401(k) accounts

A detail that catches people with multiple accounts: the RMD for each traditional IRA is calculated on that IRA’s own balance, but the IRS permits you to satisfy the combined total from any single IRA or combination of them — you do not need to withdraw proportionally from each one.

Employer plans like 401(k)s work differently. Each plan’s RMD generally must be calculated and withdrawn from that specific plan — you cannot use a withdrawal from one 401(k) to satisfy the RMD requirement on a different 401(k), even if both are traditional accounts with the same custodian. Anyone with several old 401(k)s from past employers, alongside IRAs, needs to track this distinction carefully rather than assuming all tax-deferred accounts can be lumped together.

Roth accounts change the picture entirely

Roth IRAs owned by the original account holder are not subject to RMDs during their lifetime — a meaningful structural advantage that lets the account continue growing tax-free for as long as the owner chooses not to withdraw from it.

This is one of the reasons Roth conversions are attractive for some retirees: converting a traditional balance into a Roth before RMD age eliminates that portion from future required distributions entirely, at the cost of paying tax on the conversion now. The Roth conversion calculator works through that tradeoff directly, comparing the tax cost of converting today against the tax that would otherwise be owed on withdrawals — including RMDs — later.

What an RMD means for the rest of a retirement income plan

An RMD is not optional income planning — it is a mandatory withdrawal that happens whether or not you need the cash that year, which means it needs to be built into the broader retirement income picture rather than treated as a separate line item.

If the RMD amount exceeds what you actually need to spend, the excess still counts as taxable income and typically gets reinvested in a taxable account rather than spent — worth knowing when projecting tax brackets in retirement. The retirement income gap calculator and safe withdrawal rate calculator both help frame how a mandatory RMD interacts with a broader withdrawal strategy, particularly in years where the RMD alone would satisfy — or exceed — your planned spending.