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RMD Deadline 2026: What to Do Before December 31

By Justin · October 29, 2026

It's the second week of December. The tree's up, the grandkids land on Saturday, and somewhere in the pile of mail on the kitchen counter is a letter from the company that holds your IRA. You've been meaning to open it since Halloween. When you finally do, it reminds you, more or less politely, that your RMD deadline is December 31, and the government would like some of that money out of the account before then.

An RMD is a required minimum distribution: the smallest amount the IRS makes you withdraw each year from most tax-deferred retirement accounts (the kind where the income tax waits until the money comes out) once you reach a certain age. For 2026, that deadline really is December 31. There's one exception: if 2026 is the first year you owe one, you can wait until April 1, 2027. Waiting comes with a catch, though, and we'll get to it.

Here's a way to picture the whole thing. For decades, the IRS has been a silent partner in your traditional IRA or 401(k). It let you skip the tax on the money going in and on every dollar of growth since, and it never said a word.

RMDs are that partner finally asking for its share. You can't say no. But you have more say in how it gets paid than most people realize.

Who has to take an RMD this year?

Your start age depends on the year you were born. A 2022 law called SECURE 2.0 pushed it later, so it isn't the 70½ or 72 you may remember hearing about.

So if you were born in 1953, you turned 73 this year, and 2026 is your first RMD year. If you were born in 1950 or earlier, you're already taking them under the older rules.

The rule covers traditional IRAs, SEP and SIMPLE IRAs, 401(k)s, 403(b)s and most other workplace plans. Roth IRAs don't require withdrawals at all while you're alive, and since 2024 the Roth part of a 401(k) or 403(b) doesn't either.

One more exception matters if you're still working. If your current employer's plan allows it, you can usually hold off on RMDs from that plan until the year you retire. It doesn't cover IRAs, plans from old jobs, or anyone who owns 5% or more of the business. (Inherited accounts play by a different set of rules altogether, and they're beyond what this article covers.)

Check your birth year, then check your account types. That's the whole question of who.

How much do you have to take out?

The math is a single division. Take the account's balance on December 31 of last year and divide it by a number from the IRS's Uniform Lifetime Table, a chart of life-expectancy factors with one for every age. The factor shrinks as you get older, so the share you have to take out grows each year.

Say you were born in 1953 and your IRA held $500,000 on December 31, 2025. The factor at 73 is 26.5, so your 2026 RMD is $500,000 ÷ 26.5, or about $18,868. That's roughly $1,572 a month. (If your spouse is your sole beneficiary and more than 10 years younger, you use a different table with bigger factors, which means smaller withdrawals.)

Two things trip people up. First, it's a minimum, not a cap: you can always take more. Second, anything you've already withdrawn from that account this year counts toward it, so subtract what's come out since January before you panic about the full amount.

The RMD calculator does the division for you, picks the right start age from your birth year, and projects the next decade of withdrawals so you can see where they're headed. (It assumes 5% yearly growth on what's left, which is a convenient guess, not a promise real markets will keep.)

The math takes a minute. The timing deserves a little more thought.

Is your first RMD due December 31 or April 1?

I'll be honest: this is the part I'd slow down on. Only your first RMD gets extra time. The IRS calls April 1 of the year after you reach RMD age your required beginning date, and it's tempting to treat it as a free three-month extension.

It isn't quite free. Every RMD after the first is due by December 31, so if you push your 2026 RMD into 2027, you'll owe two in the same tax year: the 2026 one by April 1, and the 2027 one by December 31.

Back to that $500,000 IRA. Say it's still around $500,000 at the end of 2026. The factor at 74 is 25.5, so the 2027 RMD comes to about $19,608. Delay the first one and 2027 brings $38,476 of taxable withdrawals instead of about half that. (Your real figures depend on what the account does between now and then.)

Stacking that much income into one year can do three things you won't love:

• Push part of it into a higher tax bracket. Income stacks, so the extra RMD lands on top of everything else you earn that year.
• Raise your Medicare premiums later. Higher earners pay an IRMAA (income-related monthly adjustment amount), a surcharge on Medicare Part B and Part D premiums. It's based on your tax return from two years earlier, so a crowded 2027 can come back as pricier premiums in 2029.
• Make more of your Social Security taxable. The more other income you have, the more of your benefit counts as taxable income.

Your 2027 income is already climbing, too. Social Security checks rise 3.6% in January, the 2027 cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) the Social Security Administration announced on October 14. The 2027 Medicare Part B premium hadn't been announced when I wrote this, so I can't tell you how much of that raise it'll eat.

Delaying can still be the right call. If 2026 was an unusually big income year (a final paycheck, a bonus, a property sale) and you expect 2027 to be much leaner, moving the first RMD into the leaner year might come out ahead.

Try it before you decide: the RMD calculator's "What if you withdraw more than required?" panel lets you enter a second RMD as an extra withdrawal and see roughly where it lands your bracket. It only counts withdrawals and uses the 2026 brackets, so treat it as a rough picture, not a tax return.

And if you turned 73 in 2025 and used your April 1 extension this spring, heads up: your second RMD is due December 31. The double-up year you were warned about is this one.

Waiting feels free. Often it just means paying later, at a higher rate.

What happens if you miss the RMD deadline?

The IRS charges an excise tax, which is just a penalty tax, of 25% on whatever you should have taken out and didn't. Miss that whole $18,868 and you'd owe about $4,717 on top of the regular income tax. Fix it within the correction window, which is generally about two years, and the penalty drops to 10%, or about $1,887.

If it happens, take the missed amount out as soon as you notice, then report it on Form 5329, the tax form for extra taxes on retirement accounts. The form's instructions also let you ask the IRS to waive the penalty if the shortfall came from a reasonable error and you're fixing it. The IRS's RMD FAQ page walks through the details.

A missed RMD is a fixable mistake. Ignoring it is the expensive one.

What if you have more than one retirement account?

Then you calculate an RMD for each one, and the rules on where the money comes from depend on the account type:

• IRAs: figure each one's RMD, add them up, and take the total from any one IRA or spread it across several.
• 403(b)s: same idea, but only among your 403(b)s.
• 401(k)s: each plan's RMD has to come out of that plan.

You can't mix types, so a big IRA withdrawal won't cover what you owe from a 401(k). This is the quiet argument for consolidating old workplace accounts before RMD age: fewer accounts, fewer letters, fewer chances to miss one.

More accounts don't mean a bigger RMD. They just mean more places it has to come from.

What can you do with an RMD you don't need?

Some people need every dollar of their RMD to pay the bills. Others are pulling out money they'd rather leave alone. If you're not sure which camp you're in, the monthly expense calculator will tell you what your life actually costs, so you can see whether the RMD is covering groceries or just sitting in checking. If it's the second, you've got options.

Give it away, tax-free. A qualified charitable distribution (QCD) sends money from your IRA straight to a charity, and it counts toward your RMD without counting as taxable income, even if you don't itemize your deductions.

You have to be at least 70½, the check has to go directly from the IRA to the charity, and it only works from IRAs, not 401(k)s. The limit for 2026 is $111,000 per person; the 2027 figure hasn't been announced yet. If you give to charity anyway, this is about the most tax-efficient way to do it.

Reinvest it. The rule says the money has to leave the retirement account. It doesn't say you have to spend it. You can move it into a regular brokerage account and keep it invested, and many custodians (the banks and brokerages that hold your accounts) will even transfer shares over directly instead of selling them first. You'll owe tax on the RMD either way, but the money keeps working.

Use it to settle your tax bill. You can ask your custodian to withhold federal income tax from the RMD. Some retirees take theirs in December with enough withheld to cover the whole year's tax, since the IRS generally treats withholding as if it were paid evenly through the year. If you've been sending quarterly estimated payments, that's worth asking a tax pro about.

Mind the order if you're converting to a Roth. A Roth conversion moves money from a traditional IRA into a Roth IRA, paying the tax now so later withdrawals come out tax-free. In an RMD year, the first dollars out of the account count toward your RMD, and the RMD itself can't be converted. So take the RMD first, then convert anything extra.

It's also worth seeing what the IRS's schedule does to your savings over time. At 73 your RMD is about 3.8% of the balance, and by 80 it's nearly 5%.

The Investment Simulator's withdrawal phase lets you try withdrawal rates like those against your own balance and watch how long the money holds up. If the required pace is faster than the one you'd choose, reinvesting the difference keeps it growing.

You can't skip the withdrawal. You can decide where it goes.

Your RMD checklist before December 31

1. Confirm you owe one. Check your birth year against the table above and list every account that isn't a Roth.
2. Find each account's December 31, 2025 balance. It's on your year-end statement, or your custodian can tell you.
3. Run the numbers in the RMD calculator, or check the figure your custodian sends you.
4. Subtract what you've already taken from each account this year.
5. Decide where it goes: spending, a charity through a QCD, withholding, or a brokerage account.
6. If this is your first RMD, choose on purpose between December 31 and April 1. Don't let it default to April because you ran out of December.
7. Submit the request by early December. Custodians get swamped at year end, and many set their own cutoff dates before December 31. The rule is that the money has to be out of the account by the deadline, not that you asked for it by then.

Seven steps, maybe an hour. Cheaper than a 25% penalty by a mile.

Frequently asked questions

What is the RMD deadline for 2026?

December 31, 2026. The only exception is your very first RMD: if you reached RMD age in 2026, you can wait until April 1, 2027, but your 2027 RMD is still due by December 31, 2027.

Do withdrawals I already made this year count toward my RMD?

Yes. Money you've already taken out of the account this year counts toward that account's RMD. Subtract it from the total and you'll see what's left to withdraw before December 31.

Do I have to take an RMD from a Roth IRA or Roth 401(k)?

Not while you're alive. Roth IRAs have never required them, and since 2024 the Roth part of a 401(k) or 403(b) doesn't either. People who inherit those accounts do face withdrawal rules of their own.

Can I put my RMD back into a retirement account or convert it to a Roth?

No. An RMD can't be rolled over or converted to a Roth IRA. You can still do a Roth conversion in the same year, but only with money beyond the RMD, after the RMD has come out. You're free to invest the RMD itself in a regular taxable account.

What if my RMD is more than I need to live on?

You have to take it out, but you don't have to spend it. You can reinvest it in a regular brokerage account, or, if you're 70½ or older, send some or all of it from your IRA straight to a charity as a qualified charitable distribution so it never counts as taxable income.

The partner always gets paid

I'm not a tax professional, and I'm not going to pretend one article can make these calls for you. Your bracket, your Medicare premiums and your plans for the money all depend on numbers I can't see. If your situation has real wrinkles (an inherited account, a big one-time income spike, a much younger spouse), an hour with a tax pro is cheap next to a mistake.

But here's the part that's worth sitting with. That silent partner was always going to get paid. That was settled the day you took the tax break. What's still up to you is how: on time instead of with a 25% penalty, spread across two years instead of crammed into one, sent to a cause you care about instead of to the top of your tax bill.

So open the letter. Run your number in the RMD calculator, put the request in before the holiday rush, and if you want the bigger picture of whether your savings will last once withdrawals begin, Am I Ready to Retire? walks through it.

The partner gets its share. You get to choose the terms.