RMDs Under SECURE 2.0: Why "73" Becomes "75" and What It Means for You

If you've been paying attention to required minimum distribution rules over the last decade, you've watched the goalposts move three times. Up until 2019, RMDs started at age 70½ — a half-birthday rule that confused everyone who tried to explain it. The original SECURE Act of 2019 changed the starting age to 72, which simplified the math but caught a lot of people who had been planning for 70½. Then SECURE 2.0, signed at the end of 2022, raised it again — to 73 for anyone born between 1951 and 1959, and to 75 for anyone born in 1960 or later. The 75 rule kicks in starting in 2033.

So if you're reading this and you were born in, say, 1955 — your RMD age is 73, and your first RMD year is 2028. If you were born in 1962 — your RMD age is 75, and your first RMD year is 2037. Right? Each two-year shift sounds like a small change but actually moves the conversion window I wrote about in the Roth conversions article by a meaningful amount. Let me walk through what actually changed and what it means for planning.

The current schedule

The "first RMD year" matters because that's the year your traditional IRA balance from the prior December 31 starts being divided by an actuarial factor — the Uniform Lifetime Table — to produce a minimum required distribution amount. You can take more than the minimum, but you can't take less. Whatever you take is taxable as ordinary income.

The first-year quirk: April 1 of the following year

One technical wrinkle. Your first RMD has a special deadline. Most years' RMDs must be taken by December 31. But your very first RMD can be deferred to April 1 of the year after you turn your RMD age. That "delay until April 1" sounds attractive — until you realize that if you do delay, you'll end up taking two RMDs in the same calendar year (the prior year's by April 1, the current year's by December 31). Two RMDs in one year stack up to a much bigger taxable income event, often pushing you into a higher bracket and triggering IRMAA two years later.

For most retirees, taking the first RMD in the year you actually turn your RMD age — not deferring to April 1 of the next year — produces a smoother tax outcome. The delay only makes sense in narrow situations.

The penalty (used to be 50%; now 25% or 10%)

If you miss an RMD — take less than required, or skip the year entirely — there's a federal excise tax penalty. SECURE 2.0 reduced this penalty meaningfully:

• Old rule (pre-2023): 50% of the missed amount. Brutal.
• SECURE 2.0 rule (post-2023): 25% of the missed amount.
• Reduced further to 10% if you correct the missed RMD within two years (the "correction period").

So the worst-case is now half what it used to be, and there's a forgiving correction window if you catch the mistake reasonably promptly. The penalty is filed on Form 5329 with your tax return — you can also request a waiver of the penalty with reasonable cause documentation, and the IRS has been generous with waivers for genuine oversights.

Action item: don't miss RMDs. Use a calendar reminder, set up automatic distributions with your IRA custodian, or coordinate with your CPA. The penalty is reduced but not gone, and the easiest fix is not missing the deadline.

The big SECURE 2.0 change: Roth 401(k) RMDs are gone

One of the most underappreciated changes in SECURE 2.0: starting in 2024, Roth accounts inside employer 401(k) and 403(b) plans no longer require RMDs during the original owner's lifetime. This brings them in line with Roth IRAs, which have never had RMDs.

Before 2024, if you had Roth money in a 401(k), you were required to take RMDs from it after RMD age — even though Roth distributions are tax-free, you still had to drain the account on a schedule. Most planners worked around this by rolling the Roth 401(k) into a Roth IRA before RMD age. SECURE 2.0 made the workaround unnecessary.

If you have Roth money sitting in an old 401(k) from a prior employer, you no longer need to roll it out before RMDs to avoid forced distributions. The Roth balance can stay in the 401(k) for life if that's preferable for some other reason (lower fees, better investment options, ERISA creditor protection in some states). Roll it out if there's a reason; don't roll it out just for the RMD.

How the math works in your first RMD year

The basic calculation: your traditional IRA balance on December 31 of the prior year, divided by the Uniform Lifetime Table divisor for your age. The divisor for age 73 is currently 26.5. For age 75, it's 24.6. For age 80, it's 20.2. The divisor decreases each year, which means the percentage of your balance you must distribute increases as you age.

So a $1,000,000 traditional IRA balance for a 73-year-old produces a first-year RMD of roughly $37,700 ($1,000,000 ÷ 26.5). For an 80-year-old, the RMD on the same balance is roughly $49,500. By 90, the divisor is around 12.2, and a $1,000,000 balance produces an RMD of roughly $82,000. The percentages compound — and the taxes on those distributions follow.

This is why the Roth conversion window in your sixties matters so much. Every dollar you convert to Roth before RMDs start is a dollar that doesn't drive future RMDs. Less RMD = less taxable income = less IRMAA. The compounding effect over a long retirement is meaningful.

Aggregating RMDs across accounts (and where you can't)

One useful flexibility: if you have multiple traditional IRAs, you can aggregate the RMDs and take the total from any one IRA (or any combination). So if you have $500,000 in IRA #1 and $500,000 in IRA #2, you can take the entire $37,700 RMD from just IRA #1 and leave IRA #2 alone for the year.

You cannot aggregate across account types. RMDs from a 401(k) must come from that 401(k); they can't be satisfied from an IRA. Inherited IRAs have their own RMD rules and can't be aggregated with your own IRAs. Roth accounts (IRAs and now 401(k)s) don't have RMDs at all during the original owner's lifetime.

Action item: if you have multiple traditional IRAs, you can choose which one to draw from. This matters when one account holds investments you want to sell anyway (rebalancing rationale) versus another that you want to leave undisturbed.

Using QCDs to satisfy RMDs without the income hit

Quick mention because it's covered separately in the QCD article. Once you turn 70½, you can make Qualified Charitable Distributions directly from your traditional IRA to a qualified charity. The QCD counts toward your RMD but is excluded from your income. So if your RMD is $37,700 and you donate $20,000 via QCD to your church or favorite charity, only $17,700 of taxable income hits your return. Same charitable giving as you'd otherwise do, much better tax treatment than donating cash from a brokerage account.

The QCD limit in 2026 is approximately $108,000 per individual per year (it indexes annually). For most retirees the practical limit is much smaller, but the technique scales nicely.

Planning implications

• Use the conversion window before RMDs. This is the most important RMD planning move. Convert traditional IRA dollars to Roth in your sixties; reduce future RMDs.
• Project RMDs for the next ten to twenty years. Most retirees never see the cumulative RMD picture. Run the projection. The numbers are usually larger than people expect.
• Coordinate RMDs with Social Security claim age. If you delay SS to 70 and RMDs start at 73, the years 70 through 72 are post-SS but pre-RMD — still potentially conversion window, but with SS now adding to taxable income.
• Set up automatic RMD distributions with your custodian. Schwab, Fidelity, and Vanguard all offer automatic RMD calculation and distribution. Removes the missed-deadline risk.
• Consider QCDs for charitable giving once you're 70½. Tax-efficient charitable giving from RMD dollars.

What this looks like in practice

The RMD rules feel like administrivia until you see what they do to your taxable income at 75 versus 65. A retiree who hits 75 with $1.5 million in a traditional IRA is looking at an RMD of roughly $61,000 in year one of distributions, every year, increasing as the divisor drops. That income, on top of Social Security, on top of any pension, on top of taxable account interest and dividends, often pushes total taxable income deep into the 22% or 24% bracket — and triggers IRMAA. The dollars are forced out by federal law. There is no opt-out.

The planning move is to shrink the traditional IRA balance before RMD age starts, so the forced distributions in your seventies and eighties hit a smaller base. That's what Roth conversions accomplish. That's what tax-aware withdrawal sequencing accomplishes. That's what QCDs accomplish. None of these are exotic. All of them require a written plan and intentional execution. Sleep at night, knowing the forced-distribution math is working with you instead of against you.

The bottom line

Required minimum distributions used to start at 70½. Now they start at 73 for most current pre-retirees, and 75 for anyone born in 1960 or later. The penalty for missing was 50%; now it's 25%, dropping to 10% with correction within two years. Roth 401(k) RMDs are gone as of 2024. The Uniform Lifetime Table forces an increasing percentage of your traditional IRA balance out as you age. The planning move that matters most is shrinking the traditional balance before RMDs hit — through conversions, withdrawals, and QCDs. The rules are clear. The math is doable. The only mistake is not doing it.