The IRS lets savers postpone their very first required minimum distribution past age 73, pushing the deadline to April 1 of the following year instead of the usual December 31. That grace period sounds like extra breathing room, but it comes with a catch the agency spells out plainly: the year’s second RMD is still due on its normal December 31 schedule, so a retiree who waits ends up reporting two years’ worth of withdrawals as income in a single tax year. The delay is legal and common, and it can also be the most expensive shortcut in retirement tax planning.
The April 1 Deadline for a First RMD
Under IRS rules, the required beginning date for a traditional IRA, SEP IRA, or SIMPLE IRA is April 1 of the calendar year after the owner turns 73. Workers still on the job with a 401(k), 403(b), or other employer plan can sometimes push the date further, to April 1 following the year they retire, if the plan allows it and they do not own 5% or more of the sponsoring business. The rule exists because the government wants tax-deferred savings eventually taxed, not because it wants to hand out a one-time reprieve; the April 1 date only ever applies to the very first distribution a saver owes.
The IRS illustrates the mechanic with a filer who turns 73 in August: that person’s first RMD, based on the prior year-end account balance, is not due until April 1 of the following calendar year, while the second RMD, calculated from a fresh year-end balance, is due by December 31 of that same year. Both withdrawals still count as ordinary income when they land, and the size of each one is set independently by the account balance and life-expectancy factor for that specific year. Every dollar withdrawn under either deadline is taxable in the year it is actually received, not the year it was technically owed.
Nothing about the April 1 extension requires an election or paperwork; it is simply the default deadline the law provides for anyone’s very first RMD, whether from an IRA or an employer plan that permits the retirement-based delay. Most brokerages and plan administrators calculate the withdrawal automatically once an account owner crosses the age-73 threshold, using the Uniform Lifetime Table the IRS publishes for that purpose. The only action actually required of the account owner is deciding whether to withdraw earlier than the default date, since the automatic path is the one that produces the double income year.
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Why Two Withdrawals Can Land in One Tax Year
Delaying the first RMD to April 1 does not erase the second one; it stacks both distributions into the same 12 months of income. A retiree whose ordinary withdrawal would normally sit in a lower bracket can find that a doubled RMD pushes total taxable income into a higher marginal bracket, or past the income threshold that triggers a Medicare IRMAA surcharge on Part B and Part D premiums roughly two years later. Because IRMAA is assessed off a tax return filed about two years earlier, the surcharge from a doubled-RMD year does not show up on a premium bill until well after the extra income has already been reported.
The stacking effect compounds for anyone also collecting Social Security, since a larger reported income can make a larger share of that benefit taxable on the same return. Two RMDs of similar size, drawn from an account that grew for decades, can be enough to push a retiree into a higher marginal tax bracket or over the income line that triggers the Medicare surcharge, even though neither withdrawal by itself would have caused either problem. None of this is a penalty; it is simply what happens when income the tax code let grow untaxed for years is recognized twice in a single filing period.
The same stacked income can also affect how investment income is taxed elsewhere on the return, since higher ordinary income can push long-term capital gains and qualified dividends that would otherwise sit at a lower rate into a bracket where they are taxed at a higher one. A retiree selling other assets in the same calendar year as a doubled RMD is effectively doing so on top of an artificially inflated income base, not the income base that year would have carried under the normal December 31 schedule. The interaction is easy to miss because the RMD rule and the capital-gains rule live in different parts of the tax code, but the IRS calculates total taxable income from both at once.
The December 31 Alternative That Avoids the Stack
The IRS’s own guidance offers a way around the collision: a saver can choose to take that first RMD by December 31 of the year they turn 73, the same deadline as everyone who already started, rather than waiting for the following April. Doing so splits the two withdrawals into separate tax years and avoids reporting both as income at once. The tradeoff is that the account owner gives up the extra months of tax-deferred growth the April 1 rule was designed to offer, in exchange for a cleaner, single RMD the following year.
The choice matters most for retirees who expect a large first-year RMD relative to their other income, or who are already close to a bracket line from pensions, part-time work, or investment income. IRA owners can evaluate the tradeoff account by account, since an IRA’s RMD is calculated independently of any employer-plan RMD the same retiree might also owe that year. For someone who used a 401(k)’s retirement-based delay to work past 73, the same math applies the year they finally retire and their first RMD comes due, making the December 31 option worth running through a projection before the April deadline arrives, not after.
There is no single right answer, because the same delay that costs one retiree a higher tax bracket can be the better move for another whose income drops sharply the year they turn 73, leaving room to absorb both withdrawals without crossing a threshold at all. What the IRS record makes clear is that the April 1 date is a deadline, not a discount: it changes when the money must come out, not how much of it the government eventually taxes. The retirees best positioned to use it are the ones who run the two-withdrawal scenario against their expected income before the year they turn 73 ends, not after the first distribution has already landed.
This article was researched and drafted with the assistance of artificial intelligence.
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