Inherited IRA 10-year rule calculator.

If you inherited an IRA from someone who died in 2020 or later, the account generally has to be empty by December 31 of the tenth year after the death. The part people miss is the stretch in between: when the owner had already reached their required beginning date, the final regulations still require a withdrawal every year from year one to year nine, sized with your life expectancy from the Single Life Table. This calculator builds that schedule and shows the balloon in year ten.

How the schedule is built

The 10-year clock ends on December 31 of the year containing the tenth anniversary of the owner's death, so an owner who died in 2025 sets a deadline of December 31, 2035. Whether you owe anything before that depends on one fact: had the owner reached their required beginning date? If not, no distribution is required in years one to nine and the whole balance can wait for year ten. If they had, you must take an annual amount in each of those years. The amount is the December 31 balance of the prior year divided by a divisor from the Single Life Table (Table I in Publication 590-B), using your age on your birthday in the year after the death, and then reducing that divisor by 1 for every later year.

The 10-year rule applies to a designated beneficiary who is not an eligible designated beneficiary. Eligible designated beneficiaries are the owner's surviving spouse, a child of the owner who has not reached majority, a disabled person, a chronically ill person, and anyone who is not more than 10 years younger than the owner. They generally keep the life-expectancy option, so this schedule does not describe them.

Two timing details matter. The final regulations apply to required minimum distributions for calendar years beginning on or after January 1, 2025. For 2021 through 2024 the IRS issued relief from the excise tax on missed annual amounts, but the Treasury preamble says that relief does not require make-up payments and does not extend the 10-year deadline. A shortfall in a required year can cost a 25% excise tax on the amount not taken, reduced to 10% if you correct it inside the correction window.

Worked examples (hypothetical figures, real rules)

Owner died after the required beginning date. The owner died in 2025 and the account held $500,000 on December 31, 2025. You are 45 in 2026, so the Single Life Table divisor is 41.0 and the 2026 withdrawal is $12,195.12. In 2027 the divisor drops to 40.0 and the withdrawal on a balance of $512,804.88 (5% growth, withdrawal at year end) is $12,820.12. By 2034 the divisor is 33.0 and the withdrawal is $18,207.42. In 2035 you must take everything left, $643,313.49. Total over ten years: $778,525.19.

Owner died before the required beginning date. Same account, same assumptions, but no withdrawal is required in 2026 to 2034. The balance grows to $775,664.11 at the start of 2035 and the whole $814,447.31 is due by December 31, 2035. At a 24% rate that is $195,467.36 of tax in one year, which is why many beneficiaries spread withdrawals out even when they are not required to.

Mistakes people make

• Waiting until year ten when annual amounts were required. If the owner had reached their required beginning date, skipped years can carry the 25% excise tax.
• Using your own age table. The divisor comes from the Single Life Table for your age in the year after the death, then falls by exactly 1 each year. It is not recalculated from your age.
• Forgetting the owner's own year-of-death amount. If the owner died on or after the required beginning date and had not taken that year's RMD, the beneficiary must take it.
• Treating a trust or a spouse like an adult child. Different beneficiary types follow different rules.

Who this is for, and what it does not cover

It suits an adult child, grandchild or friend who inherited a traditional IRA. It does not model eligible designated beneficiaries, trusts, estates, inherited Roth IRAs (no tax on qualified withdrawals, same timing), employer plans with their own provisions, or a surviving spouse who rolls the account into their own IRA. Check the IRA custodian's rules, because many custodians default to a method when you do not choose.

Sources

Retrieved 2026-10-26. Each link was opened and checked against the claim next to it.

• Final regulations T.D. 10001, Required Minimum Distributions (Federal Register, July 19, 2024): the annual-withdrawal requirement after the required beginning date, 2025 applicability and 2021 to 2024 relief.
• IRS Publication 590-B (2025): Distributions from IRAs: the 10-year rule, Table I, the divisor reduction and the excise tax.
• 26 U.S.C. 401(a)(9): required distributions, applicable age and eligible designated beneficiaries: the eligible designated beneficiary definition.