What are the 2026 RMD rules and deadlines?

When exactly does the IRS make you start pulling money out, and what does it cost if you forget? The start age is 73 or 75, the yearly deadline is December 31, and a missed required minimum distribution carries one of the steepest penalties in the tax code. Here are the 2026 rules in plain terms.

When yours starts

Under the SECURE 2.0 Act, your start age depends on your birth year:

• Born 1951 to 1959: RMDs begin at 73.
• Born 1960 or later: RMDs begin at 75.

You’re allowed to delay your very first RMD to April 1 of the following year. I’d think hard before you do. Take that deferral and you stack two RMDs into one calendar year, which piles up the income and usually the tax. After year one, every RMD is due by December 31.

What it applies to

Traditional IRAs, SEP and SIMPLE IRAs, and most workplace plans like 401(k)s and 403(b)s. Not Roth IRAs while you’re alive, and since 2024 not the Roth money inside a workplace plan either. If you have several traditional IRAs, you total the RMDs and can pull the whole amount from any one of them. Workplace plans are stricter: each generally needs its own withdrawal.

How the number is set

Take your balance from December 31 of the prior year and divide by a factor from the IRS Uniform Lifetime Table. The factor falls as you age, so the forced withdrawal climbs. For 2026 the divisors run 26.5 at age 73, 24.6 at 75, 20.2 at 80, and 16.0 at 85.

Say you’re 75 with $2,000,000 in a traditional IRA. The factor is 24.6:

$2,000,000 ÷ 24.6 ≈ $81,301

Every dollar lands on your return as ordinary income.

The deadline and the penalty

The hard date is December 31. Miss it and the excise tax is 25% of the shortfall for 2026, cut to 10% if you correct the miss promptly, generally within two years. That’s a penalty worth never triggering, so don’t leave the RMD for the last week of December when a market dip or a slow custodian can cause a miss.

The part most people miss

Most people treat the RMD as spring paperwork. The expensive blind spot is not seeing it for what it is: a rising tax bill you could read years ahead. The income it forces can tip you into a higher bracket and lift your Medicare premiums two years later through IRMAA, the income-based surcharge on Medicare.

If you’re charitable and want to cut the bill, a Qualified Charitable Distribution lets you send up to $111,000 in 2026 straight from your IRA to charity. It counts toward the RMD and never hits your return.

If your accounts are large

The real work happens before the first RMD, not during it. Roth conversions in your 60s shrink the balance the table will later divide, and the deeper playbook lives in our RMD strategies for high-net-worth seniors. The RMD tells you it’s coming, decades out. The whole game is to listen.