Inherited IRA SECURE Act Distribution Calculator

Introduction: the two questions an inherited IRA actually poses

Inheriting a retirement account raises two separate questions that are easy to conflate. The first is a compliance question: what is the smallest amount the IRS requires you to withdraw this year, and by what date must the account be empty? The second is a planning question: given that deadline, what withdrawal pattern costs you the least in tax? The answers frequently point in opposite directions, and this calculator is built to show both at once.

The compliance side changed materially with the SECURE Act. Before 2020, most designated beneficiaries could take distributions over their own life expectancy, a pattern usually called the stretch. Now, as IRS Publication 590-B puts it, a designated beneficiary who is not an eligible designated beneficiary must fully distribute the account by December 31 of the year containing the tenth anniversary of the owner's death. A ten-year clock replaced a forty-year one for a large share of beneficiaries.

What follows from that is the part most quick calculators miss. Whether you must also take something in each of years one through nine depends on when the original owner died relative to their required beginning date, which is April 1 following the year they reached age 73. Publication 590-B is explicit: if the owner died before that date and the 10-year rule applies, no distribution is required for any year before the tenth. If the owner died on or after it, annual required minimum distributions continue and the ten-year deadline still applies. Two accounts with identical balances and identical beneficiaries can therefore have completely different obligations.

This page uses the actual IRS Single Life Expectancy table, Table I from Appendix B of Publication 590-B, with all 121 published values from age 0 through 120 and over. Divisors match the printed table exactly. It then applies the correct divisor rule for the beneficiary category you select, computes the required minimum for every year, and lets you compare three withdrawal strategies against each other.

How to use the inherited IRA calculator and read the schedule

Seven inputs, and two of them are easier to get wrong than they look.

1. Inherited IRA balance. The real rules apply the divisor to the account value as of December 31 of the preceding year. For the closest match to a custodial statement, enter the December 31 balance of the year before your first distribution year.
2. Beneficiary age in the first distribution year. Not the age at the date of death. The divisor is fixed by the beneficiary's age in the year distributions begin, which is normally the year after the owner died.
3. Decedent age at death. This drives two separate branches: whether the owner had reached the required beginning date, and, where the rules call for it, the owner's own remaining life expectancy.
4. Year of death. Sets the deadline. The 10-year window ends on 31 December of the year containing the tenth anniversary of death, so a 2024 death means a 2034 deadline.
5. Beneficiary classification. Surviving spouse, other eligible designated beneficiary, minor child of the decedent, ordinary designated beneficiary, or a non-person such as an estate or charity. This is the single most consequential input.
6. Assumed annual return. A planning figure applied to the balance remaining after each year's withdrawal.
7. Withdrawal strategy. Required minimum only, even withdrawals to the deadline, or defer as long as legally possible.

The output has three parts. A plain-language statement of which rule applies and why. A year-by-year table showing the divisor, the required minimum, the withdrawal actually taken under your chosen strategy, and the ending balance. And a strategy comparison showing what all three approaches would total and, critically, how large the single biggest withdrawal year becomes under each. The chart underneath plots the balance path against the withdrawals so the shape of the schedule is visible at a glance, and the address bar updates with a link that reproduces the entire scenario.

Formula: divisors, required minimums, and the balance recursion

Every version of the rule reduces to the same shape. The required minimum in year $y$ is the balance divided by an applicable denominator:

Formula: RMD_y = B_y / D_y

$${\mathrm{RMD}}_y=\frac{B_y}{D_y}$$

where $B_y$ is the balance entering year $y$ and $D_y$ is the applicable denominator. What differs between beneficiary categories is entirely how $D_y$ is produced.

Fixed-term (subtract-one) method, used by every individual beneficiary except a surviving spouse. Look up the beneficiary's age in the first distribution year in Table I, then subtract one for each subsequent year:

Formula: D_y = T(a_0) − (y − y_0)

$$D_y=T\left(a_0\right)-(y-y_0)$$

Recalculation method, used by a surviving spouse who remains a beneficiary. The denominator is looked up fresh each year at the spouse's current age:

Formula: D_y = T(a_0 + y − y_0)

$$D_y=T(a_0+y-y_0)$$

Ghost life expectancy, used when a non-person beneficiary inherits from an owner who had already reached the required beginning date. The denominator comes from the owner's age in the year of death, reduced by one for each year since:

Formula: D_y = T(a_owner) − (y − y_death)

$$D_y=T\left(a_{\mathrm{owner}}\right)-(y-y_{\mathrm{death}})$$

Here $T\left(a\right)$ is the Table I value at age $a$, $a_0$ is the beneficiary's age in the first distribution year $y_0$, and $a_{\mathrm{owner}}$ is the decedent's age at death. When an owner dies on or after the required beginning date and leaves a designated beneficiary, Publication 590-B directs you to the longer of the two life expectancies, so the calculator takes the larger denominator:

Formula: D_y = max(D_y^ben, D_y^owner)

$$D_y=\max (D_y^{\mathrm{ben}},D_y^{\mathrm{owner}})$$

The balance then rolls forward. With withdrawal $W_y$ and assumed return $r$, growth is applied to what remains after the withdrawal:

Formula: B_y+1 = (B_y − W_y) ·(1 + r)

$$B_{y+1}=(B_y-W_y)·(1+r)$$

and in the deadline year the withdrawal is forced to the whole remaining balance, $W_{\mathrm{final}}=B_{\mathrm{final}}$. The even-withdrawal strategy simply raises the withdrawal to the larger of the required minimum and an equal share of what is left:

Formula: W_y = max(RMD_y, B_y / (y_deadline − y + 1))

$$W_y=\max ({\mathrm{RMD}}_y,\frac{B_y}{y_{\mathrm{deadline}}-y+1})$$

Which rule applies to which beneficiary

The classification decides everything else. This is the branch structure the calculator implements, drawn from Publication 590-B.

Worked example: an adult child inheriting $400,000 from a 75-year-old

An owner dies in 2024 at age 75, so on or after the required beginning date. Their 45-year-old child inherits $400,000, and distributions begin in 2025 when the child is 46. The assumed return is 5%.

The child is a designated beneficiary but not an eligible one, so the 10-year rule applies with a deadline of 31 December 2034. Because the owner died after the required beginning date, annual RMDs are also required. Table I gives 40.0 at age 46 and 14.8 at age 75; the owner's figure is reduced by one for 2025, giving 13.8. The longer life expectancy wins, so the first divisor is 40.0:

Formula: RMD_2025 = 400000 / 40.0 = 10000

$${\mathrm{RMD}}_{2025}=\frac{400000}{40.0}=10000$$

After that withdrawal the remaining $390,000 grows 5% to $409,500, and 2026 uses a divisor of 39.0 for an RMD of $10,500. The pattern continues, and the trap becomes obvious by 2033:

Nine years of dutiful minimum withdrawals barely dent the account, because a 5% return outruns a divisor in the thirties. The balance is higher in 2033 than it was in 2025, and the entire $480,912 must come out in a single tax year. For most households that is the difference between a marginal rate in the twenties and one in the thirties, plus knock-on effects on Medicare premiums and capital-gains brackets.

Now compare the three strategies over the same ten years:

The totals look backwards at first glance: deferring withdraws the most money. That is because money left in the account keeps compounding, so the pre-tax total rises the longer you wait. What matters is not the total but the bracket it lands in. Even withdrawals move $88,000 less through your tax return than the minimum-only path and spread it across ten years instead of concentrating 81% of it into one.

Reading the result and the tax-timing decision

The strategy comparison is the part worth spending time on. The rule tells you the floor; it does not tell you the sensible answer. A useful heuristic: work out the width of your current marginal bracket, divide the inherited balance by ten, and see whether a tenth of the account fits inside the headroom you have. If it does, even withdrawals are usually close to optimal. If it does not, you may want to front-load in years when your other income is low, such as between retirement and the start of Social Security.

Two situations flip the logic. If you expect a large income drop within the window, deferring into that low year can beat spreading, provided the account is one where deferral is legal. If you expect income to rise, or you expect tax rates generally to rise, taking more early is the hedge. The calculator will not make that judgement, but it will size it.

One mechanical caution when reconciling against a custodial statement: the real divisor is applied to the prior 31 December balance, not to a mid-year value. If your figures are close but not identical to your custodian's, that timing difference and the custodian's use of actual returns rather than a flat assumption will account for most of the gap.

Limitations and assumptions in this projection

The divisor logic follows Publication 590-B, but the surrounding model is deliberately simple and there are several places it will not match a professional calculation.

• This is not tax advice and does not model tax. No brackets, no state tax, no net investment income tax, no effect on Medicare IRMAA thresholds, and no excise tax on a missed distribution. The withdrawals shown are pre-tax amounts.
• Growth is a flat annual rate. Real sequence-of-returns risk matters a great deal here: a poor decade of returns changes both the balance path and the wisdom of deferring. Test several return assumptions rather than one.
• One withdrawal a year, taken at the start. Real distributions can be monthly or quarterly, and the timing within the year changes the compounding slightly.
• The required beginning date is approximated by age 73. The actual date is 1 April of the year following the year the owner reached 73, and the threshold age differed for owners born before 1951. Deaths close to that boundary need checking against the owner's actual birth year.
• Trusts are not modelled. A trust named as beneficiary may be treated as a see-through trust with a designated beneficiary, or as a non-person, depending on its drafting. That determination changes the entire schedule and is outside this tool.
• Elections are not modelled. An eligible designated beneficiary may elect the 10-year rule instead of life expectancy payments, and a surviving spouse may roll the account into their own IRA, which replaces the beneficiary rules with owner rules entirely.
• Multiple beneficiaries and successor beneficiaries are excluded. Separate accounting rules, the September 30 determination date, and the treatment on the death of a beneficiary all fall outside this model.
• Table I values are the current published table. The life expectancy tables were revised effective 2022; schedules that began before that date may have used transition rules to reset the divisor.

Questions beneficiaries ask about inherited IRA schedules