Which balance am I supposed to enter?

December 31 of last year — not the current balance, and not an average. The rule is written against the prior year-end figure, so the amount you are required to take this year is fixed by a number that is already history and does not move with the market. A current balance is usually higher, which makes the distribution larger than required, and a larger distribution is not harmless: it adds to taxable income and it cannot be undone.

Why does the table start at 72 if I cannot start until 73?

Because the table is not new and the age is. The applicable age has been raised more than once, and Publication 590-B lists three of them: 70½ for the earliest years, 72 for a later group, and 73 for everyone reaching that age from the current rules onward. The row for 72 is not dead data — it still serves owners who began under the previous rule. This page starts at 73 because that is when the first distribution year falls under the law as it stands.

Which of the three life expectancy tables applies to me?

The one on this page, unless one of two specific things is true. The Uniform Lifetime Table covers an owner whose spouse is not the sole beneficiary of the account, or whose spouse is not more than ten years younger — which is most owners. If you have inherited the account rather than owned it, a different table applies, and if your sole beneficiary is a spouse more than ten years younger, a third one does. Both of those need an input this page does not ask for, so it cannot pick the table for you.

What happens if I take out less than the required amount?

An excise tax is charged on the part you failed to take, at 25% of the shortfall — and that is on top of the ordinary income tax the distribution would have carried, not instead of it. The rate drops to 10% if you correct it within the correction window, which means distributing the missing amount and reporting the additional tax on a return; the window's deadline is the earliest of several dates. It is a conditional reduction rather than an automatic one, which is why the second table on this page prints both rates side by side.

Can I delay the first distribution?

Yes, into the following April. The cost is that the year you delay into then contains two required distributions — the delayed first one and the one for that year — which can push you into a higher bracket for that single year. This page computes one year's requirement and does not model the doubling, so if you are considering the delay, the figure here is the size of each payment rather than of the tax year.

Is the requirement computed per account or on the total?

Per account. Each IRA or plan account has its own requirement, computed from its own prior year-end balance and the same factor, so three accounts mean three divisions and three withdrawals. Some account types may be aggregated for the purpose of meeting the requirement, but the computation itself starts account by account, which is why this page asks for one balance and returns one distribution rather than a household total.

Does a Roth IRA have required distributions?

Not while the owner is alive. The RMD rules do not apply to Roth IRAs, which is a genuine advantage that no amount of arithmetic on this page can express, because it is about when income is forced to be realised rather than about how much you end up with. A traditional account has to start paying out on a schedule its owner does not control; a Roth can be left alone, and the comparison between the two account types is incomplete without that.

RMD Calculator

Result

20,325.20

Required minimum distribution

Life expectancy factor (years): 24.6
Monthly equivalent: 1,693.77
Balance after the distribution: 479,674.80

An RMD calculator answers a question with a deadline attached: how much must come out of a retirement account this year, whether or not you want it to. The required minimum distribution is a division — last year's closing balance divided by a life expectancy factor the IRS publishes — and the divisor is not yours to choose. It comes from the Uniform Lifetime Table, which rises with age, so the share you are obliged to take grows every year, and what looks like an IRA withdrawal you decided on is in fact a floor set by statute. This page looks that factor up from the age you enter, applies it, and reports what is left in the account afterwards. The balance it asks for is the one on December 31 of last year, not today's; entering a current balance inflates the answer, and nothing on the page can detect that you did. The required beginning age is 73, while the table itself starts at 72, because the table still serves a generation that began under the earlier rule. The reason the arithmetic matters is the excise tax on anything you fail to take: it is charged on the shortfall itself, and it is far heavier than the cost of correcting it.

500,000 on the prior December 31, as age rises

Age	Life expectancy factor (years)	Required distribution	Monthly equivalent	Balance after the distribution
73	26.5	18867.92	1572.33	481132.08
75	24.6	20325.2	1693.77	479674.8
80	20.2	24752.48	2062.71	475247.52
85	16	31250	2604.17	468750
90	12.2	40983.61	3415.3	459016.39
95	8.9	56179.78	4681.65	443820.22
100	6.4	78125	6510.42	421875
110	3.5	142857.14	11904.76	357142.86
120	2	250000	20833.33	250000

The factor column falls monotonically and the distribution column rises with it, which is the whole shape of the requirement: the same balance is divided by a smaller and smaller number. The last column is what is left after one year, not after the rest of retirement — the page shows a single year, and the balance it leaves becomes next year's divisor base.

The price of not taking it, at both rates

Age	Required distribution	Excise tax at 25%	Excise tax at 10% (corrected)
73	18867.92	4716.98	1886.79
75	20325.2	5081.3	2032.52
80	24752.48	6188.12	2475.25
85	31250	7812.5	3125
90	40983.61	10245.9	4098.36
95	56179.78	14044.95	5617.98
100	78125	19531.25	7812.5
110	142857.14	35714.29	14285.71
120	250000	62500	25000

Same distribution, two rates, and the gap between them is the value of correcting a mistake rather than ignoring it: at the default case, 5,081.30 against 2,032.52. Note that the excise tax is not a substitute for the income tax that would have been owed on the distribution — it is charged on the amount that never came out, so the money is taxed as ordinary income when it finally does.

Formula

required distribution = prior year-end balance ÷ life expectancy factor for your age | monthly equivalent = required distribution ÷ 12 | balance after the distribution = prior year-end balance − required distribution | excise tax on a shortfall = amount not distributed × 25%, or × 10% if corrected within the window

Prior year-end balance: The account balance on December 31 of the previous year — the figure the whole division is built on, and the one input on this page most likely to be entered wrongly. A current balance is almost always a larger number, so using it produces a distribution that is too big, and nothing about the result looks wrong. The balance moves every year, which is why this is a figure to look up rather than remember.
Age: Your age at the end of the distribution year. It selects the factor and nothing else, and because the factor falls monotonically with age, the required share rises every year even if the balance is flat. The field starts at 73: the first distribution year under current law is the year you reach 73, so accepting 72 would produce a page that answers a question the law no longer asks.
Life expectancy factor: A number of years, read from the Uniform Lifetime Table, that stands in for how long the account is expected to last. 26.5 at 73, 24.6 at 75, 2.0 at 120 and above. It is not a life expectancy in the actuarial sense and not a prediction about you — it is the statutory divisor, and it is designed to distribute the account over a period longer than most owners will live.
Amount not distributed: How much of the required distribution you did not take out in the year. It is the base for the excise tax, and it is measured against the requirement rather than against what you meant to take — a distribution that is a day late, or that comes out in the following January, does not count against this year's requirement.
Excise tax rate: 25% of the shortfall by default, reduced to 10% if the correction window is met: the amount is distributed and the additional tax is reported on a return. The reduced rate is conditional rather than automatic, which is why the second table prints both columns instead of the one that applies.

Use it once a year, on last year's closing balance, to find the figure that has to come out before the year ends. It is also worth running when deciding whether to take more than the minimum, since the answer to that is about tax brackets rather than about this table. It does not cover an inherited account or a much-younger spouse, both of which use a different table with a different input, and it does not schedule the payments — it answers for one year at a time.

Worked examples

The default case
1. The factor for age 75 in the Uniform Lifetime Table is 24.6 years.
2. Required distribution: 500,000 ÷ 24.6 = 20,325.20.
3. Monthly equivalent: 20,325.20 ÷ 12 = 1,693.77.
4. Balance after the distribution: 500,000 − 20,325.20 = 479,674.80.
About 4.07% of the account has to come out this year. The share is 1 ÷ 24.6 rather than anything the owner chose, which is the difference between this page and a withdrawal planner — there is no decision in the main output at all.
The first year it applies
1. The factor for age 73 is 26.5 years — the largest one that applies to anyone under current law.
2. Required distribution: 500,000 ÷ 26.5 = 18,867.92.
3. Monthly equivalent: 18,867.92 ÷ 12 = 1,572.33.
4. Balance after the distribution: 500,000 − 18,867.92 = 481,132.08.
The first year is the cheapest one: 3.77% of the balance, against 4.07% two years later. That is the same 500,000 in both cases, which is the point — the requirement is not about how much the account holds but about how much longer the table assumes it has to last.
The top of the table
1. The final row of the table is 120 and over, with a factor of 2.0 years.
2. Required distribution: 500,000 ÷ 2 = 250,000.
3. Monthly equivalent: 250,000 ÷ 12 = 20,833.33.
4. Balance after the distribution: 500,000 − 250,000 = 250,000.
Half the account in one year. The floor never reaches 100% because the factor never reaches 1, so an owner who lives long enough is required to withdraw half of what is left each year — a distribution that large is well into the top brackets, which is one reason the account is usually drawn down before this point.
A small account
1. Factor 26.5 again: the divisor depends on age, not on the balance.
2. Required distribution: 300 ÷ 26.5 = 11.32.
3. Monthly equivalent: 11.32 ÷ 12 = 0.94.
4. Balance after the distribution: 300 − 11.32 = 288.68.
The requirement has no minimum and no rounding-up rule, so a 300 dollar account owes 11.32. The excise tax is what makes this worth noticing: failing to take that 11.32 exposes the same 25% rate as failing to take a quarter of a million, and the cost of getting it right is one withdrawal.

Limitations

Only the Uniform Lifetime Table is implemented. IRS Publication 590-B publishes three tables, and this page uses the one that covers an owner whose spouse is not the sole beneficiary or is not more than ten years younger — the ordinary case. An inherited account uses the single life expectancy table, and an owner whose sole beneficiary is a spouse more than ten years younger uses the joint and last survivor table; both need an input this page has no field for, and using the wrong table changes the factor. The page computes one year. It does not schedule distributions, does not know what the balance will be next year, and does not combine several accounts — the RMD is computed per account, so a household with three IRAs needs three runs of this page. The first distribution can be delayed past the year you reach the applicable age, into the following April, and doing so puts two distributions in the same tax year. This page does not model that, and the doubling is a tax-planning consequence rather than an arithmetic one. The excise tax is shown at both rates as a pair of columns, and the reduced one has conditions attached — the shortfall has to be distributed and the additional tax reported within a correction window whose deadline is the earliest of several dates. Neither the conditions nor the deadline is checked here. The factor is applied to a prior year-end balance that the page cannot verify, and it does not adjust for a distribution taken earlier in the same year, a recharacterisation, or a rollover that arrived in December. Nothing here is tax advice about whether to take more than the minimum, which is a question about brackets, and the answer for a given year depends on income this page never sees.

Frequently asked questions

Which balance am I supposed to enter?: December 31 of last year — not the current balance, and not an average. The rule is written against the prior year-end figure, so the amount you are required to take this year is fixed by a number that is already history and does not move with the market. A current balance is usually higher, which makes the distribution larger than required, and a larger distribution is not harmless: it adds to taxable income and it cannot be undone.
Why does the table start at 72 if I cannot start until 73?: Because the table is not new and the age is. The applicable age has been raised more than once, and Publication 590-B lists three of them: 70½ for the earliest years, 72 for a later group, and 73 for everyone reaching that age from the current rules onward. The row for 72 is not dead data — it still serves owners who began under the previous rule. This page starts at 73 because that is when the first distribution year falls under the law as it stands.
Which of the three life expectancy tables applies to me?: The one on this page, unless one of two specific things is true. The Uniform Lifetime Table covers an owner whose spouse is not the sole beneficiary of the account, or whose spouse is not more than ten years younger — which is most owners. If you have inherited the account rather than owned it, a different table applies, and if your sole beneficiary is a spouse more than ten years younger, a third one does. Both of those need an input this page does not ask for, so it cannot pick the table for you.
What happens if I take out less than the required amount?: An excise tax is charged on the part you failed to take, at 25% of the shortfall — and that is on top of the ordinary income tax the distribution would have carried, not instead of it. The rate drops to 10% if you correct it within the correction window, which means distributing the missing amount and reporting the additional tax on a return; the window's deadline is the earliest of several dates. It is a conditional reduction rather than an automatic one, which is why the second table on this page prints both rates side by side.
Can I delay the first distribution?: Yes, into the following April. The cost is that the year you delay into then contains two required distributions — the delayed first one and the one for that year — which can push you into a higher bracket for that single year. This page computes one year's requirement and does not model the doubling, so if you are considering the delay, the figure here is the size of each payment rather than of the tax year.
Is the requirement computed per account or on the total?: Per account. Each IRA or plan account has its own requirement, computed from its own prior year-end balance and the same factor, so three accounts mean three divisions and three withdrawals. Some account types may be aggregated for the purpose of meeting the requirement, but the computation itself starts account by account, which is why this page asks for one balance and returns one distribution rather than a household total.
Does a Roth IRA have required distributions?: Not while the owner is alive. The RMD rules do not apply to Roth IRAs, which is a genuine advantage that no amount of arithmetic on this page can express, because it is about when income is forced to be realised rather than about how much you end up with. A traditional account has to start paying out on a schedule its owner does not control; a Roth can be left alone, and the comparison between the two account types is incomplete without that.

References

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