This calculator returns the year your required distributions begin, the Uniform Lifetime Table divisor for the year you are asking about, and the amount you must take.
What is my required minimum distribution?
Once distributions have to begin, the amount is not a judgment call: it is the prior year-end balance divided by a figure from one IRS table. This works out which year yours begin, which is the part people get wrong, and what the amount is for the year you choose.
Distribution periods are the Uniform Lifetime Table at Treasury Regulation 1.401(a)(9)-9(c), all 49 rows from age 72 through 120 and over. The age at which distributions must begin is Internal Revenue Code section 401(a)(9)(C)(v) as read with Treasury Regulation 1.401(a)(9)-2. Both read at the text and verified 14 September 2026. The IRS also publishes a plain-English summary in its required minimum distribution FAQs.
How it works
The first year has two deadlines
The first required distribution can be deferred to 1 April of the following year. Doing so means taking two distributions in that following year, both taxed in it, which can push a household into a higher bracket and, two years later, into a higher Medicare bracket. Every year after the first has a single deadline of 31 December.
Two points the tool states rather than settles
Anyone born in 1949 falls on a date rather than a year: the applicable age is 70 and a half before 1 July 1949 and 72 on or after it. A birth year alone cannot resolve it, so the card names both rather than picking one.
Anyone born in 1959 sits in a genuine gap. SECURE 2.0 left two clauses that both reach that year and give different answers, and the regulation leaves the paragraph covering 1959 reserved. The calculator applies 73, says that it is applying 73, and gives the first distribution year under each reading.
Where this calculator is the wrong one
It uses the Uniform Lifetime Table, which is not the right table if your sole beneficiary is a spouse more than ten years younger than you. An inherited account follows a different set of rules entirely. The card says so in both cases rather than returning a number that looks right.
Questions
Common questions
Does a Roth account have required distributions?
Not in the owner’s lifetime, which is one of the reasons a conversion is worth costing out before distributions begin rather than after.
What happens if I miss one?
There is an excise tax on the shortfall, reduced if it is corrected promptly. The correction is a form rather than a conversation, and it is worth doing in the year it is noticed.
Check this against your own numbers.
The first distribution has two deadlines rather than one, and taking both in the same year moves more than the tax bill. We can cover it in a short conversation, at no charge and with no obligation.
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