Required Minimum Distributions in 2026: New SECURE 2.0 Age Rules Explained

The SECURE 2.0 Act, signed into law in late 2023, raised the required minimum distribution age from 72 to 73 for most retirement account holders, with a further increase to 75 for those born in 1960 or later. If you turned 73 in 2025 or are approaching that milestone in 2026, the rules governing required minimum distributions have changed enough under SECURE 2.0 that assumptions from even a few years ago may lead you to miscalculate your withdrawal obligations or, worse, trigger a tax penalty. sentence

What Changed With SECURE 2.0 and When It Takes Effect

In 2026, the operative rule for most people is age 73. If you were born between 1951 and 1959, you are subject to the age-73 rule. If you have not yet taken your first RMD and reached 73 in 2025, you had until April 1, 2026 to take your first RMD without penalty. Missing this April 1 deadline in 2026 triggers a 25% excise tax on the amount that should have been withdrawn, reduced from the previous 50% under the old rules, but still a serious hit. Before SECURE 2.0, the standard RMD starting age was 72. The new law raised it to 73 for anyone who turns 73 on or after January 1, 2023. The next scheduled increase, to 75, applies to those born in 1960 or later, which means that the first cohort subject to the age-75 rule won’t reach it until 2035.

The new tables reduce the size of the annual RMDs relative to the old ones, which modestly reduces the immediate tax burden for most retirees. A 73-year-old using the new table applies a distribution period of about 26.5 years to the previous year-end balance, compared to about 24.7 years under the old table. For a $500,000 IRA, that means a first-year RMD of about $18,868 rather than the $20,243 that the old table would have produced. The IRS also revised its uniform table in 2023, reflecting longer life expectancies.

Which Accounts Are Subject to RMD Rules in 2026

One significant change that Secure 2.0 made permanent is that Roth 401(k) accounts are no longer subject to RMDs during the owner’s lifetime, starting in 2024. Previously, Roth 401(k) balances held at work required distributions once the owner reached RMD age, unlike Roth IRAs. Employers have had time to update their plan documents, but if you held a Roth 401(k) and had not yet confirmed your plan’s current administration rules, it’s worth verifying that the exemption is properly reflected in your account. /

Inherited IRAs operate under separate, more complicated rules introduced by SECURE 1.0 and clarified by IRS proposed guidance. The 10-year rule for most non-spouse beneficiaries still applies, and the IRS has confirmed that annual distributions are required within that 10-year window if the original owner had already begun taking RMDs. Roth IRAs remain exempt from RMDs entirely, which continues to make them a planning tool for people who want to pass tax-advantaged assets to heirs or simply avoid the forced-income problem that traditional IRAs create.

How the Penalty Structure Works Now

A missed RMD of $20,000 at the rate of 25 percent costs $ 5,000 in excise taxes, not to mention the income tax on the distribution itself. This is a significant improvement for people who make honest mistakes, but it still represents a high cost compared to simply getting the calculation right. The excise tax for missed RMDs was reduced from 50 to 25 percent under Secure 2.0, and it is reduced to 10 percent if you correct the shortfall within the correction window, which the IRS defines as the earlier of two years from the missed distribution or the date the IRS issues a notice of deficiency.

The IRS has indicated that it expects full compliance now that the regulatory landscape has largely stabilized. But you shouldn’t count on ongoing administrative relief as a planning strategy. The IRS continues to grant penalty relief in transition situations, most recently providing relief for some inherited IRA beneficiaries navigating the 10-year rule while the final regulations are pending.

Calculating Your 2026 RMD

If you have multiple IRAs, you calculate the RMD for each account separately, but you can withdraw the total from any combination of those accounts. The same rule applies to 403(b) accounts. The calculation itself is straightforward in concept: divide the account balance on December 31, 2025 by the distribution period from the IRS uniform life table for your age in 2026.

On a $500,000 balance, that’s the difference between a roughly $18,868 RMD and a roughly $15,480 RMD—a tax deferral advantage worth building into your annual income projection if you qualify. Using the current IRS tables, a 73-year-old account owner whose spouse is 58 would use a distribution period of approximately 32.3 years, compared to 26.5 years under the standard Uniform Lifetime Table. For married couples where the spouse is more than 10 years younger than the account owner, the Joint Life and Last Survivor Expectancy Table produces a longer distribution period and thus a smaller annual RMD.

Qualified Charitable Distributions as an RMD Strategy

This strategy is particularly powerful for retirees who do not itemize deductions—which is the majority of taxpayers after the higher standard deductions introduced in recent years—because the exclusion reduces adjusted gross income directly, which can help keep income below thresholds that affect Medicare Part B and D premiums, Social Security benefits, and certain tax brackets. Qualified charitable distributions, or QCDs, allow IRA owners age 70.5 or older to transfer up to $105,000 directly from a traditional IRA to an eligible charity in 2026. The $105,000 limit is now indexed for inflation and was raised from the original $100,000 cap.

The charitable organization must receive the funds directly from the IRA custodian; a check made out to you and then donated does not qualify. If your RMD is $20,000 and you direct $20,000 to qualified charities, your RMD obligation is satisfied and none of that $20,000 appears in your AGI. /

When Deferring or Delaying Distributions Creates Problems

The conventional advice to always delay the first RMD should be subjected to scrutiny based on your actual income situation, not as a default rule. The SECURE Act gave people more flexibility to defer RMDs, but deferral isn’t always the right move.

Similarly, Roth conversions done in the years between retirement and RMD age, sometimes called the conversion window, are a widely discussed strategy, but they have real costs. Converting large amounts accelerates current-year taxes and can raise your IRMAA-adjusted Medicare premiums two years later, since Medicare uses a two-year lookback on income. A $50,000 Roth conversion in 2026 affects your Medicare premiums in 2028.

Additional Reading

• IRS Publication 590-B — the IRS’s own detailed guidance on distributions from IRAs, including current life expectancy tables and QCD rules
• Social Security Administration resources on how IRA distributions affect combined income calculations and the taxation of Social Security benefits
• Fidelity research on retirement income planning and RMD strategies, available through the Fidelity Investor Education Center.
• Vanguard’s retirement income guidance, including analysis of withdrawal sequencing and tax-bracket management in the RMD years
• Consumer Financial Protection Bureau resources on retirement account distributions and avoiding common tax mistakes in retirement