Required minimum distributions and giving from your IRA

At a set age, withdrawals from a traditional retirement account stop being optional. If you give to charity, sending the money straight from the account instead can satisfy the requirement without adding to your income.

When they start

The age is 73, and the condition attached to it is worth stating carefully, because a loose version puts whole birth cohorts in the wrong rule. The current version covers anyone who turned 72 later than the end of 2022: their first required minimum distribution falls due on April 1 in the year after the one in which they reach that age. Two older rules still describe people who started earlier. Someone who passed seventy and a half after 2019 closed, yet was not already 72 when 2023 opened, worked to the same first deadline measured from 72 rather than from the current age. Someone who passed seventy and a half before 2020 opened worked to it measured from seventy and a half.

Then the trap that follows from the first deadline. Every required distribution for a year after the year you reach the required age is due by December 31 of that later year. So delaying the first one to the following spring does not skip a year — it stacks two distributions into a single calendar year, and two years of income arriving at once is what pushes a household into a higher bracket. The rules for a Roth account are different, and this article is about a traditional one.

How the amount is worked out, in outline

Your custodian usually calculates the amount for you, so this is rarely arithmetic you do yourself. It is built from the balance at the end of the prior year and a life expectancy factor. Withdrawing extra in one year buys you nothing against the next one, and the distribution itself arrives on a 1099-R.

Missing one

If you take out less than the required amount, an excise tax of 25% generally applies to the part that was not distributed. That rate drops to 10% if, during the correction window, you take the missing distribution and file a return reflecting the additional tax. Either way the tax is reported on Form 5329. Where the shortfall was a reasonable error and you have taken steps to put it right, you can ask for the tax to be waived. None of this is new for this year; it is a long-standing part of the rules, and the beneficiary version of the same tax sits in the ten-year rule for inherited accounts.

Giving straight from the account

The move has a name, a qualified charitable distribution, and four things have to line up for it. Your IRA trustee sends the money straight across to the charity instead of paying it to you. The account is an IRA, but not a SEP or SIMPLE arrangement that is still being contributed to. The recipient is the sort of organization that could have taken a tax-deductible contribution from you directly. And you have turned seventy and a half by the day the money moves. Where all four hold, the distribution is generally kept out of your income. For 2025 the maximum annual exclusion is $108,000, and on a joint return each spouse can have their own. A gift you are arranging now, in the 2026 calendar year, is measured against the 2026 amount instead, which is $111,000.

Two further points catch people out. The directness of the transfer is not a formality: a check drawn to you and passed along afterwards fails the test, so tell the custodian who the payee is. You also need the charity's written acknowledgment, the same paperwork a deduction would have required. And having kept the money out of your income, you cannot then deduct it as a charitable contribution as well.

It also counts toward your required minimum distribution, which readers ask about as a separate question because it is a separate rule. One offset applies: the amount you can exclude is reduced by IRA contributions you deducted for years in which you were seventy and a half or older, and Publication 590-B carries a worksheet for that calculation.

Why a qualified charitable distribution often beats a deduction

Money that never enters your income does not raise your adjusted gross income, and adjusted gross income is the starting point for several other calculations on the return. A taxpayer who takes the standard deduction gets nothing at all from a charitable gift on Schedule A, because Schedule A is not in play — see standard versus itemized for why most households are in that position, and charitable giving without itemizing for the separate route that opens in 2026. The same taxpayer gets the full benefit from a qualified charitable distribution, because the exclusion happens before the return is figured rather than on a schedule they never file.

Withholding, and what to do in December

Federal income tax can be withheld from a distribution, and that is arranged with the custodian. If nothing is withheld, the tax on the money still has to reach the IRS during the year, through estimated payments or through withholding somewhere else. Retirees often find that a required distribution also changes how much of their Social Security is taxable, which is a second reason to look at the whole year rather than one withdrawal.

Then the calendar. In November, ask the custodian for this year's figure and whether any charitable transfer already sent has been credited against it. Do not leave the transfer itself to the final week of December, when a delay at either institution can push it into the wrong year.