Project stretched inherited IRA RMDs for eligible designated beneficiaries.
First-year RMD
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Life expectancy divisor (year 1)
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Total RMD over 20 years
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Your breakdown
Updates live as you type| Year | Age | Divisor | RMD |
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The deferral the SECURE Act mostly closed
For decades, a beneficiary who inherited an IRA could take small required distributions stretched across their own life expectancy, leaving the bulk of the account compounding tax-deferred for thirty or forty more years. The 2019 SECURE Act ended that for most heirs and replaced it with a 10-year rule: empty the account within a decade. The stretch survives only for a narrow group the IRS calls eligible designated beneficiaries, and this tool is built for them. It is not the right calculator for an adult child who inherited after 2019; that situation belongs with the 10-year inherited IRA tool instead.
Eligible designated beneficiaries are a surviving spouse, a minor child of the original owner (only until the age of majority, then the 10-year clock starts), a disabled or chronically ill person, and anyone not more than ten years younger than the deceased. If you are in that group, you can still stretch distributions over your single life expectancy, and the tax deferral that buys is the whole point of running these numbers.
How the life expectancy divisor drives each year
Each year's required minimum distribution is the prior year-end balance divided by a life expectancy factor from the IRS Single Life Expectancy table, published in Pub 590-B. In the first distribution year you look up the factor for your age, and in every following year the factor steps down rather than being looked up fresh. Because the divisor shrinks each year while the remaining balance keeps growing, the dollar RMD rises steadily over time. This calculator uses interpolated factors between the table's published ages, so a figure may differ by a few tenths from the exact value you would read off the official table for filing; treat the output as a close planning estimate, not the number you report to the IRS.
A $500,000 inheritance at age 40
Take the default: a 40-year-old eligible beneficiary inherits $500,000 and the account grows 6 percent a year. The first-year factor is 45.7, so the opening RMD is $500,000 divided by 45.7, which is about $10,941. The next year the factor drops to 43.8 and the balance, after the distribution and a year of growth, is larger, so the RMD climbs to roughly $11,846. The pattern continues upward. Over a 20-year window the distributions total about $606,324, more than the original inheritance, while the account still holds a substantial balance because tax-deferred growth keeps outrunning the withdrawals.
The taxes and the traps
Every dollar pulled from a traditional inherited IRA is ordinary income in the year you take it, stacked on top of your wages. A young beneficiary stretching distributions actually benefits twice over: the account keeps compounding, and spreading the income across many years keeps each year's withdrawal from spiking you into a higher bracket. The opposite mistake, common with the 10-year rule, is letting the whole balance sit and then taking it all in year ten, which can push a six-figure distribution into the top brackets in a single year.
A few cautions specific to inherited accounts. The penalty for missing an RMD is steep, historically 25 percent of the amount you should have taken, reduced to 10 percent if you correct it promptly, so the deadline is not optional. A surviving spouse has a better option than stretching: rolling the inherited IRA into their own IRA, which resets distributions to their own timeline and is usually the stronger move. Finally, if you inherited a Roth IRA, the same distribution schedule applies but the withdrawals come out tax-free, which flips the strategy toward keeping the money invested as long as the rules allow.
Can I take more than the required minimum in a given year?
Yes. The RMD is a floor, not a ceiling. You may withdraw more whenever you want, and sometimes that is wise, for instance in a low-income year when you can fill up the lower tax brackets cheaply. The tradeoff is that every extra dollar you pull leaves less compounding tax-deferred, so larger voluntary withdrawals shrink the long-run advantage the stretch is designed to capture. Run both paths before deciding.
What happens to the account if I die before it is emptied?
Your own beneficiary, the successor beneficiary, generally does not get to start a fresh stretch. In most cases they must finish distributing the account within ten years of your death, even if you were still stretching it over your life expectancy. This is one reason the strategy rewards the original eligible beneficiary more than later inheritors, and it is worth naming a successor beneficiary explicitly so the account does not default into a less favorable payout.