First RMD Year and Qualified Charitable Distributions

What’s the one year of retirement where the order of your moves matters most? The year your first required minimum distribution comes due. The rules hand you a deferral that looks free and isn’t, and a charitable tool that only saves you tax if you fire it before anything else. Most people get both backwards.

When your first RMD lands

A required minimum distribution, or RMD, is the slice of your tax-deferred savings the IRS makes you withdraw each year. Under current rules, it begins at 73 if you were born between 1951 and 1959, and at 75 if you were born in 1960 or later. Every dollar comes out as ordinary income.

The first-year deferral that backfires

Here’s the trap built into year one. The IRS lets you delay your very first RMD to April 1 of the following year. It sounds like a free pass. It usually isn’t. Take the deferral and you land two RMDs in the same calendar year, the delayed first one plus the on-time second one, stacked on a single tax return. That double helping can push you into a higher bracket and over the IRMAA surcharge line for your Medicare premiums two years out. The “free” deferral often costs more than taking the first RMD on time.

There’s a real penalty for skipping an RMD, too. Miss it and the excise tax is 25%, cut to 10% if you fix the shortfall quickly. This is not a deadline to fumble.

The QCD that only works in the right order

Now the tool that saves you money, if you sequence it right. A qualified charitable distribution, or QCD, sends money straight from your IRA to a charity, and it never shows up as income. For 2026 you can exclude up to $111,000 per person this way, starting at age 70½. Because it satisfies part or all of your RMD without adding to your income, it’s one of the cleanest gifts in the tax code.

But the first dollars out of your IRA each year are deemed to be your RMD. So if you take the full RMD in January and do the QCD in March, the charitable transfer no longer offsets the requirement. You met it already with taxable money, and the gift saved you nothing on the withdrawal.

The rule is simple and unforgiving: do the QCD first, before any other withdrawal, so it counts against the RMD instead of piling on top of it. For the finer points, see QCD Rules and Timing in Year One.

Putting the sequence together

For a charitably inclined retiree, year one runs in this order:

• Do any QCD early in the year, before other distributions, up to the amount you want to give.
• Take the remainder of your RMD, if any is still required after the QCD.
• Skip the April 1 deferral unless a specific reason makes a two-RMD year worth it.
• Watch the income total against your IRMAA tier and bracket as you go.

For higher-net-worth households

Large balances make this the difference of real money. The April 1 deferral is far more dangerous when your RMD is six figures, because doubling it can vault you into the top IRMAA tier for a year. And if giving is already part of your plan, routing it through QCDs instead of writing checks shrinks the forced income that drives every surcharge. The years of Roth conversions before this point should already have trimmed the balance feeding these RMDs.

The RMD is one of the few tax bills that announces itself years ahead. Year one is when you prove you were listening. Give first, withdraw second, and don’t reach for the deferral that looks free.