IRA RMD Tax Calculator

What this page answers

A required minimum distribution is not a bill, it is a forced sale that turns into a bill. This page starts from the withdrawal you have no choice about and works out what it costs you: federal tax, state tax, and how much of that you can legally avoid. If you only want the withdrawal figure and the schedule ahead of it, the RMD amount calculator is the shorter route.

How IRA Required Minimum Distributions Work

The IRS lets you defer tax on a traditional retirement account for decades, and then it wants its money. From your RMD age onward you must withdraw a minimum amount each year from traditional IRAs, SEP and SIMPLE IRAs, and 401(k)s. Miss it and there is a 25% excise tax on whatever you failed to take out, dropping to 10% if you fix it within two years.

When it starts depends on when you were born, which is the part that has changed twice recently:

Roth IRAs are exempt for the original owner, for life. Since 2024 designated Roth accounts inside a 401(k) are exempt too. Inherited accounts of any kind follow their own rules and are not what this page calculates.

RMD formula:

RMD = Account Balance (31 December of the prior year) ÷ Life Expectancy Factor

Factors come from the Uniform Lifetime Table in IRS Publication 590-B:

That right-hand column is the thing worth internalising. The required percentage climbs every year, so a portfolio earning 5% keeps growing for a while and then does not. Somewhere in the early 80s the withdrawal overtakes the return and the balance starts falling for good.

Worked example:

A $420,000 IRA balance at age 75, factor 24.6, gives $420,000 ÷ 24.6 = $17,073. That is the floor for the calendar year, not a target. Take more if you want; you cannot take less.

One exception that changes the number a lot. If your sole beneficiary is a spouse more than ten years younger than you, use the Joint Life and Last Survivor Table instead. The factors there are considerably larger, so the required withdrawal is much smaller. A 75-year-old with a 60-year-old spouse has a factor near 27 rather than 24.6.

Multiple accounts: work out the RMD for each traditional IRA separately, then take the combined total from whichever one you like. 401(k)s do not pool that way; each employer plan has to pay its own.

First year timing: the first RMD can be deferred to 1 April of the following year. Almost nobody should. Deferring means two RMDs land in the same calendar year, and the second one stacks on top of the first, often into a higher bracket and into higher Medicare premiums two years later.

Still working? If you are past your RMD age but still employed and own 5% or less of the company, you can usually delay the RMD from that employer’s 401(k) until you retire. IRAs get no such reprieve.

The two levers worth pulling:

• Qualified Charitable Distribution. Send money straight from the IRA to a charity and it satisfies the RMD without ever appearing in your income. Better than taking the money and donating it, because it keeps your adjusted gross income down, which in turn keeps Medicare surcharges and Social Security taxation down. The annual cap is indexed: it was $105,000 for 2024 and $108,000 for 2025. The transfer has to go from the custodian to the charity. A cheque made out to you and passed along does not qualify, and neither does a donor-advised fund.
• Roth conversions before your RMD age. Every dollar converted is taxed now and never generates an RMD again. The window between retiring and the first RMD is usually the lowest-bracket stretch of a person’s life, and it is the cheapest time to do it.

Why the state rate matters more than people expect

A handful of states levy no personal income tax at all, Florida, Texas, Tennessee, Nevada, Washington, Wyoming, South Dakota and Alaska among them, so a retiree there pays the federal rate and nothing else. Several more exempt retirement income specifically while still taxing wages: Illinois and Mississippi exempt IRA and 401(k) distributions outright, and Pennsylvania exempts them once you are past 59 and a half. Others tax the whole thing at ordinary rates. On a $20,000 distribution the gap between 0% and 6% is $1,200 a year, every year, for twenty-odd years. That is one of the few retirement variables you can still change after you retire, which is why the move to a no-tax state so often happens the year before the first RMD rather than the year after.

A caution on flat rates

The calculator applies one rate to the whole distribution, which is what your marginal bracket does only if the withdrawal fits inside it. A large RMD can straddle two brackets, and it can push other income into being taxed that was not taxed before: up to 85% of Social Security becomes taxable as your combined income rises, and the Medicare premium surcharge is decided on your income from two years earlier. Treat the figure here as the floor of what the withdrawal costs rather than the whole of it, and if the distribution is large relative to your other income, take the estimate to whoever prepares your return.