RMD Rules and Tables for 2026: Ages, Deadlines, and the Penalty
Your 2026 required minimum distribution equals your December 31, 2025 account balance divided by the IRS Uniform Lifetime Table divisor for your age this year. RMDs begin at age 73 if you were born from 1951 through 1959, or 75 if you were born in 1960 or later. The deadline is December 31, 2026.
This article is general education, not tax advice. Your own RMD depends on your birth year, your account balances, and your beneficiary situation, so confirm the numbers with a tax professional or your plan administrator.
A required minimum distribution is an alarm clock you set decades ago without noticing. Every time you took a deduction for a 401(k) contribution or a traditional IRA deposit, you agreed to a deal: the government skips the tax now and collects later. The alarm is the “later.” It goes off in the year you turn 73 or 75, and it rings every year after that for the rest of your life.
The mechanics are genuinely simple once the jargon is stripped out. One balance, one divisor, one division problem. What trips people up is not the arithmetic. It is the starting age (which changed twice in four years), the first-year deadline (which is different from every other year), and the question of which of the three IRS tables applies to them.
This page is built to answer all of that for the 2026 tax year, with the actual table, so you can stop opening PDFs.
What age do RMDs start in 2026?
Either 73 or 75, and your birth year alone decides which. The SECURE 2.0 Act of 2022 raised the age from 72 to 73, and scheduled a second increase to 75.
Born 1950 or earlier
Born 1951 through 1959
Born 1960 or later
Roth IRA owners
Roth 401(k) participants
There is one more exception worth knowing. If you are still working past your starting age, are not a 5 percent owner of the business, and your employer’s plan allows it, you may be able to delay RMDs from that employer’s plan until you retire. The still-working exception applies to employer plans only. It never applies to a traditional IRA.
When is your 2026 RMD due?
December 31, 2026, for everyone except people taking their very first one. First-timers get an extension to April 1 of the following year, and it is a favor most people should decline.
Why the April 1 extension usually costs money. If you turn 73 in 2026 and delay your first RMD to March 2027, you will take two required distributions in the 2027 calendar year: the 2026 one in March and the 2027 one by December 31. Both land on the same tax return. Stacking them can push you into a higher bracket, increase the taxable share of your Social Security benefits, and raise your Medicare income-related premium bracket two years down the line. Taking the first RMD by December 31, 2026 avoids all of it.
The 2026 RMD table: IRS Uniform Lifetime Table
This is the table most people need. It applies to account owners taking their own lifetime RMD, which covers the large majority of situations. The divisors below are the IRS Uniform Lifetime Table (Table III, Appendix B, IRS Publication 590-B) and are the figures in effect for 2026 distribution years. They have been unchanged since the updated life expectancy tables took effect for 2022.
| Age in 2026 | Distribution period (divisor) |
|---|---|
| 72 | 27.4 |
| 73 | 26.5 |
| 74 | 25.5 |
| 75 | 24.6 |
| 76 | 23.7 |
| 77 | 22.9 |
| 78 | 22.0 |
| 79 | 21.1 |
| 80 | 20.2 |
| 81 | 19.4 |
| 82 | 18.5 |
| 83 | 17.7 |
| 84 | 16.8 |
| 85 | 16.0 |
| 86 | 15.2 |
| 87 | 14.4 |
| 88 | 13.7 |
| 89 | 12.9 |
| 90 | 12.2 |
| 91 | 11.5 |
| 92 | 10.8 |
| 93 | 10.1 |
| 94 | 9.5 |
| 95 | 8.9 |
| 96 | 8.4 |
| 97 | 7.8 |
| 98 | 7.3 |
| 99 | 6.8 |
| 100 | 6.4 |
| 101 | 6.0 |
| 102 | 5.6 |
| 103 | 5.2 |
| 104 | 4.9 |
| 105 | 4.6 |
| 106 | 4.3 |
| 107 | 4.1 |
| 108 | 3.9 |
| 109 | 3.7 |
| 110 | 3.5 |
| 111 | 3.4 |
| 112 | 3.3 |
| 113 | 3.1 |
| 114 | 3.0 |
| 115 | 2.9 |
| 116 | 2.8 |
| 117 | 2.7 |
| 118 | 2.5 |
| 119 | 2.3 |
| 120 and older | 2.0 |
Age 72 remains in the published table even though the starting age is now 73, because the table is written by age rather than by rule. Use the age you will actually reach during 2026, not your age on January 1.
How do you calculate your 2026 RMD?
Divide, once. The whole calculation is a single division problem plus the discipline to use the right two numbers.
Find your December 31, 2025 balance
Add the actuarial value of extra contract benefits, if you own an annuity inside the account
Find your age at any point during 2026
Look up your divisor
Divide the balance by the divisor
Withdraw it by December 31, 2026
Worked example for 2026. You turn 76 in 2026 and your traditional IRA was worth $500,000 on December 31, 2025. The Uniform Lifetime Table divisor at 76 is 23.7, so your 2026 RMD is $500,000 divided by 23.7, or roughly $21,097. That amount is ordinary income on your 2026 return. Figures are illustrative. Run your own on the RMD calculator.
Which accounts require an RMD in 2026?
Pre-tax retirement accounts do. Roth accounts and after-tax money generally do not. The rule attaches to the account, not to what you hold inside it.
Traditional IRA, SEP IRA, SIMPLE IRA
401(k), 403(b), most 457(b) plans
Roth IRA
Designated Roth 401(k) or 403(b)
Non-qualified annuity or taxable brokerage account
Inherited retirement accounts
If you hold an annuity inside an IRA, the annuity does not create an exemption, and there are two specific wrinkles (annuitized contracts and QLACs) that do change the math. Those are covered in annuity RMD rules.
Which IRS table applies to you?
Three tables exist, and most people only ever need the first one. Picking the wrong table is one of the few ways to get the arithmetic badly wrong.
| Table | Who uses it | Effect |
|---|---|---|
| Uniform Lifetime (Table III) | Account owners taking their own RMD, in almost every case | Standard divisors, the table reproduced above |
| Joint Life and Last Survivor (Table II) | Owners whose sole beneficiary for the entire year is a spouse more than 10 years younger | Longer divisors, so a smaller required distribution |
| Single Life Expectancy (Table I) | Beneficiaries of inherited accounts | Shorter divisors, so a faster required payout |
All three are published in Appendix B of IRS Publication 590-B. The Joint Life table is the one worth checking if you have a much younger spouse as your only beneficiary, because it can reduce your required distribution meaningfully compared with the Uniform Lifetime figure.
Can you take RMDs from one account to cover others?
Sometimes, and the rules differ by account type in a way that catches people with several plans.
- Traditional IRAs can be aggregated. Calculate the RMD for each IRA separately, add them, and take the total from any one or any combination of your IRAs.
- 403(b) contracts can be aggregated with other 403(b) contracts, but not with IRAs.
- 401(k) and other qualified plan accounts cannot be aggregated. Each plan requires its own distribution, taken from that plan.
- Your RMD and your spouse’s RMD are always separate. There is no joint RMD, even on a joint return.
- Annuitized contracts inside an IRA are a special case. The IRS has been revising the aggregation treatment since its July 2024 final regulations, and Announcement 2026-7 (February 23, 2026) delayed the applicability of certain related amendments, so confirm current-year treatment before relying on it.
What is the penalty for missing a 2026 RMD?
An excise tax of 25 percent of the shortfall, reduced to 10 percent if you fix it promptly. SECURE 2.0 cut this penalty sharply from the 50 percent that applied before 2023.
- The base rate is 25 percent of the amount you should have taken and did not.
- It drops to 10 percent if you correct the shortfall within the correction window under IRC section 4974(e), which generally ends at the close of the second year beginning after the year of the miss.
- Correcting means two actions: take the missed distribution, then file Form 5329 for the year of the shortfall.
- The IRS can waive it entirely for a reasonable-cause failure, if you request the waiver with the filing and show the error has been corrected.
- The most common causes are mechanical: using a current balance instead of the prior December 31 balance, using the wrong table, missing a plan account that could not be aggregated, or calculating an annuity’s value off the surrender value instead of the reported fair market value.
How can you soften the tax hit of an RMD?
You cannot skip a required distribution, but three provisions change how much of it lands on your tax return, and one changes what happens before the RMD years even start.
Qualified charitable distribution
Qualified longevity annuity contract
Roth conversions before your starting age
The senior deduction, tax years 2025 through 2028
That last point is the one nobody mentions. A distribution large enough to raise your modified adjusted gross income can quietly cost you a deduction elsewhere, which is why RMD planning is really income planning.
Moving forward
The alarm clock was set decades ago, and the only thing you control now is how gracefully you answer it. The arithmetic is one division problem. The planning question underneath it is bigger: which years you recognize income in, how a required distribution interacts with your Social Security taxation and your Medicare premiums, and whether any of that money should be converted into income you cannot outlive.
Start with the number. Run your December 31, 2025 balance and your 2026 age through the RMD calculator, then check whether any of your accounts hold an annuity whose reported value differs from the statement balance. If part of your RMD is money you do not actually need this year, the annuity taxes hub covers where it can go, and AnnuaLife’s advisor match can connect you with a Certified Annuity Advisor to sort out whether a longevity contract or an income annuity has a role in your plan. Bring your tax professional. This page does the math; it does not know your return.
Want a straight answer from a real person?