Traditional IRA owners who are 73 or older face a December 31 deadline to take their 2026 required minimum distribution, the yearly withdrawal the IRS forces out of tax-deferred retirement accounts. Miss it, and the Internal Revenue Service says the amount not withdrawn can be hit with a 25 percent excise tax. The one carve-out belongs to people who turn 73 this year, whose first withdrawal can wait until April 1, 2027. Roth IRA owners are exempt entirely, which is why the deadline covers most, not all, IRA holders.
Who has to withdraw by December 31
The IRS says account owners must generally start withdrawals from a traditional IRA, SEP IRA, SIMPLE IRA or workplace retirement plan when they reach age 73. After that first year, the schedule is annual and fixed. The 2026 withdrawal is due by December 31, 2026, and it is based on the account balance as of December 31, 2025. People who already took a first withdrawal in an earlier year are on this ordinary calendar.
That makes the deadline a concrete task for anyone who turned 73 in 2025 or earlier: find the December 31, 2025 balance of each traditional IRA, work out the required amount, and move the money out before the year ends. The tax bill for the withdrawal lands in the same year, since the distribution is taxable income. A retiree who has been drawing a steady monthly amount may already have covered it, but only the total for the year counts.
The 2026 question for a traditional IRA owner is how much has to come out by December 31, and the planner built for that job is The Retirement Tax & Withdrawal Planner, a paid 12-page guide whose four calculators include an RMD schedule and an IRMAA tier check.
Open the RMD schedule calculator in the Retirement Tax & Withdrawal Planner →
What a missed withdrawal costs
The penalty is steep because it is charged on the shortfall, not on the tax owed. If an owner is required to take a certain amount and withdraws less, the difference is the amount not withdrawn, and the IRS says that amount may be subject to a 25 percent excise tax. Someone who was supposed to take out a given sum and took nothing could owe a quarter of it on top of the ordinary income tax that would have been due on the withdrawal.
The IRS also provides a lower rate for people who fix the mistake. The excise tax drops to 10 percent if the missed distribution is timely corrected within two years. The account owner reports the shortfall on Form 5329, which the IRS uses to report additional taxes on IRAs and other retirement plans, and files it with the federal tax return. The FAQ adds that the penalty may be waived if the owner shows the shortfall came from reasonable error.
The calculation itself is a division problem. The IRS says the required amount for each account is the prior December 31 balance divided by a life expectancy factor from its published tables. In the Uniform Lifetime Table in IRS Publication 590-B, the factor is 26.5 at age 73, 25.5 at age 74 and 24.6 at age 75, so the required share of the balance edges up each year.
The April 1 delay and the two-withdrawal year
The April 1 exception is real, and the IRS spells out its mechanics. A person can delay the first required withdrawal until April 1 of the following year, so someone who reaches 73 in 2026 has until April 1, 2027 to take the amount for 2026. The second withdrawal, for 2027, is then due by December 31, 2027, the IRS explains, and it is based on the balance at the end of 2026.
That is where the delay can backfire. Publication 590-B notes that taking the first withdrawal after the year ends means two required distributions can land in one calendar year, one before April 1 and one by December 31. Both are taxable income in 2027, which can push a retiree into a higher bracket than taking the first withdrawal in 2026 would have.
The IRS lets owners with several IRAs calculate the required amount separately for each account, then withdraw the total from one or more of them. For anyone charitably inclined, the IRS says a qualified charitable distribution, a direct transfer from an IRA owned by someone 70½ or older, can satisfy all or part of the required amount.
Working out the 2026 withdrawal before December 31
The free route starts with the IRS itself. The agency’s required minimum distribution FAQ, last updated January 29, 2026, explains the age rules, the calculation and the penalty, and the IRS publishes the life expectancy tables the calculation needs. The two inputs are the December 31, 2025 balance, which each custodian reports on a year-end statement, and the factor for the owner’s age in 2026.
The legal responsibility for taking the right amount stays with the account owner, not the custodian. Anyone with more than one traditional IRA needs each balance, since the IRS says the amount is computed separately for each IRA and the total can then come from one or several of them. A charity transfer, if one is planned, has to leave the IRA as a direct transfer to count toward the amount.
The calendar adds a second consideration. The IRS treats a withdrawal as taxable income in the year it is paid, so an owner who postpones the whole 2026 amount to late December has no time to correct a miscalculation before the deadline. The owner who takes it earlier can still fix a shortfall inside the year and avoid the 25 percent tax altogether.
For an owner who wants the 2026 amount worked out alongside the tax effect, The Retirement Tax & Withdrawal Planner pairs its RMD schedule calculator with a Roth bracket fill calculator and an account withdrawal order guide. It is an optional paid guide that sits next to the IRS route above.
Click here to get The Retirement Tax & Withdrawal Planner →
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by The Money Overview’s editorial team.
