RMD Calculator
A required minimum distribution, computed the way the IRS defines it: last December 31's account balance divided by the Uniform Lifetime Table divisor for the age reached this year. The statutory rules behind that division — the start age, the penalty, the Roth exemptions — are laid out in the companion guide, RMD Rules, Explained.
Required minimum distribution
Example: $500,000 balance at age 75 → $20,325.20 required.
One division, straight from the table
The calculator performs one operation. It takes the balance an account held on December 31 of the previous year, looks up the Uniform Lifetime Table divisor for the age the owner reaches during the current year, and divides. In the worked example the divisor at age 75 is 24.6; $500,000 divided by it is $20,325.20 — 4.07% of the balance, or roughly $1,694 a month if the year's amount were spread evenly. Nothing else enters the division. This year's market performance, the owner's income, the owner's spending, and the balance the account holds today are all absent from the formula; only the prior-year-end balance and the current-year age matter.
For most account owners the divisor comes from the Uniform Lifetime Table, published at irs.gov, and the engine behind this page carries that table as a single data file transcribed from IRS Publication 590-B. The same engine computes every figure on this page at build time, so the explanation cannot drift from the tool. The statutory framing — why the regime exists, the start age, the penalty for a shortfall, and the accounts the rules exempt — is covered in the companion guide, RMD Rules, Explained: Age 73, the Formula, and the Penalty. This page stays on the mechanics of the division itself and on how to read what the calculator returns.
The start age is a single constant
Under the SECURE 2.0 Act, RMDs currently begin in the year the account owner turns 73, and the start age is scheduled to rise to 75 starting in 2033. The engine stores that age as one named constant, and the calculator consults it before it consults the table: enter an age below 73 and the result is not a zero-dollar distribution but an explanatory message that no RMD is required at that age under current law. The distinction is deliberate. Zero would look like an answer; the message says the question does not yet apply. When the scheduled 2033 change arrives, that constant is the one place the start age lives, and the table lookup and the worked figures on this page follow from it. The first RMD also has a timing rule of its own — the guide notes it and irs.gov documents it — and the calculator models the amount for a distribution year, not the calendar deadline for taking it.
Age 73 is the last stop on the timeline of retirement ages, and the sibling guide Retirement Age Milestones lays the full timeline out. The RMD calculator cares about only one of those ages.
How the divisor falls — and why the rate rises
The Uniform Lifetime Table assigns each age a divisor, and the divisors decline as age increases. Because the RMD is the balance divided by the divisor, a smaller divisor means a larger share of the balance must come out. The table below is read directly from the engine's copy of the Uniform Lifetime Table — a handful of ages, the divisor at each, and what that divisor produces on the same $500,000 prior-year-end balance. The build fails if the engine's table and the engine's division ever disagree.
| Age reached this year | Uniform Lifetime Table divisor | RMD on a $500,000 balance | Share of the balance |
|---|---|---|---|
| 73 | 26.5 | $18,867.92 | 3.77% |
| 75 | 24.6 | $20,325.20 | 4.07% |
| 80 | 20.2 | $24,752.48 | 4.95% |
| 85 | 16 | $31,250.00 | 6.25% |
| 90 | 12.2 | $40,983.61 | 8.2% |
| 95 | 8.9 | $56,179.78 | 11.24% |
| 100 | 6.4 | $78,125.00 | 15.63% |
| 110 | 3.5 | $142,857.14 | 28.57% |
| 120 | 2 | $250,000.00 | 50% |
The share column is the divisor turned inside out: one hundred divided by the divisor. At age 73 the divisor of 26.5 produces a 3.77% share; by 90 the divisor is 12.2 and the share is 8.2%, about 2.17 times the starting share; at 100 the divisor is 6.4 and the share is 15.63%. The rate does not rise in a straight line, because the divisor does not fall in one: between 73 and 74 the divisor drops by 1, while between 119 and 120 it drops by only 0.3. Small steps late in the table act on small divisors, so they move the percentage far more than larger steps at the beginning.
The engine's table runs from age 73 to age 120, 48 entries in all, ending at a divisor of 2 and a 50% share. Past the last entry the engine holds that final divisor rather than extrapolating: an age beyond the table — 125 is the age the engine's own tests use — resolves to the same 2 divisor and the same 50% share as age 120. The divisors are the only age-indexed numbers this calculator uses, and the model treats them as values to divide by, nothing more.
Three reference cases: $500,000 at 73, 75, and 80
The engine's automated tests pin three results for a $500,000 prior-year-end balance, and they are reproduced here from the same code. At the start age of 73, the divisor is 26.5 and the required distribution is $18,867.92, a 3.77% share. At 75, the divisor is 24.6 and the RMD is $20,325.20, 4.07%. At 80, the divisor is 20.2 and the RMD is $24,752.48, 4.95%.
Reading the three together shows the mechanism at work. The balance is held fixed, so every difference between the rows comes from the divisor alone. The 7 years from 73 to 80 move the required share from 3.77% to 4.95% and the dollar amount from $18,867.92 to $24,752.48, a difference of $5,884.55 on the same balance. A real account does not hold a fixed balance from one December 31 to the next, which is why the next two examples vary the balance instead of the age.
Same age, different balance: the dollars scale, the rate does not
The division is linear in the balance. Hold the age at 75 and change only the prior-year-end balance: $250,000 produces an RMD of $10,162.60; $500,000 produces $20,325.20; $1,000,000 produces $40,650.41. Halving the balance halves the distribution and doubling it doubles the distribution, while the share of the balance stays at 4.07% in every case, because the divisor — 24.6 — depends on age alone.
That is the practical meaning of the two input fields. The age field selects the divisor and therefore the percentage; the balance field selects the scale and therefore the dollars. Two owners of the same age face the same percentage regardless of how much they hold, and the same owner faces a different percentage each year until the table's final divisor, regardless of what the balance does.
A falling balance can lower the dollar RMD while the rate rises
A common misreading of "the required percentage rises every year" is that the dollar RMD must rise every year too. It need not, because each year's division starts from a fresh December 31 balance. Take the reference case at 80: $500,000 ÷ 20.2 = $24,752.48, a 4.95% share. Suppose — purely as an assumption the example chooses, not a forecast — that after that distribution and a year of whatever the account did, the following December 31 balance is $460,000. At 81 the divisor is 19.4, the share has risen to 5.15%, and the RMD is $23,711.34 — $1,041.14 less than the year before. Assume instead a following balance of $540,000, and the same 5.15% share produces $27,835.05, $3,082.58 more.
The percentage moved the same way in both cases; the dollars moved in opposite directions. The table fixes only the share. The balance the account happens to hold at each year-end — after the prior year's distribution, and after whatever growth or loss the account experienced, which this model does not simulate — sets everything else. The calculator therefore answers one year at a time and does not project a multi-year schedule of RMDs; doing so would require assumptions about returns that this tool deliberately does not make. The Retirement Withdrawal Calculator is where an assumed return and an assumed withdrawal are modeled together.
How to read the output
The result box returns four lines. The first is the required distribution for the year, in dollars — the balance divided by the divisor. The second is the Uniform Lifetime Table divisor the engine used, shown so the division can be checked by hand. The third is the same distribution expressed as a share of the balance, which is what the table really encodes. The fourth is a monthly equivalent, the annual figure divided by twelve; it is a convenience for picturing the amount, not a rule about timing. The requirement is annual, and how a distribution is spread through the year is a separate question from how large it must be.
Two things about the inputs are easy to get backwards. The balance field wants the account's value on December 31 of the previous year, not its value today; entering a current balance produces a number that looks like an RMD but is not the one the formula defines. The age field wants the age the owner reaches during the distribution year — the guide's "age reached this year" — not the age at the start of the year: for anyone whose birthday falls after January 1 the two differ by one, and therefore select different divisors. The calculator recomputes as the fields are typed, so a corrected input replaces the result immediately.
The RMD is a floor, not a plan
The RMD is a floor, not a ceiling. Withdrawing more than the minimum is always allowed; the schedule is a tax rule, and the model treats it as nothing more than that. A tempting misreading is to treat the share column as a withdrawal rate to live on — 3.77% at 73, rising from there. It is not one. Whether a portfolio can sustain a chosen withdrawal pace across a whole retirement is a different piece of arithmetic from what the IRS requires in any single year; the guide The 4% Rule covers the research behind the withdrawal-rate heuristic and where it strains, and the Retirement Calculator models a drawdown month by month. The RMD calculator has no opinion on either.
The share rising with age also does not mean an account is emptied on any schedule. The guide describes the table's purpose as winding a deferred account down; arithmetically, the division never reaches zero — the share is applied to whatever balance remains, so the table by itself never divides a balance to zero. Even at the 2 divisor that ends the engine's table, the share is 50%, half the balance rather than all of it. Nothing on this page is a projection of how long an account lasts; that depends on withdrawals, returns, and spending the model does not see.
Where the model stops
The calculator performs the account-owner division under the Uniform Lifetime Table and nothing else. The cases that fall outside that division — an inherited account, a sole beneficiary who is a much-younger spouse, an owner with several accounts to aggregate — each change the answer, and the guide RMD Rules, Explained lists them and says where each belongs. It does not compute the tax on the distribution: a distribution from a pre-tax account is taxed as ordinary income when it is taken, and that figure depends on the rest of a return this tool never sees. It does not compute the excise tax for a shortfall — under SECURE 2.0, 25% of the shortfall, reduced to 10% if corrected in a timely manner — because it has no way of knowing what was actually withdrawn.
It also does not decide which accounts owe an RMD. Which pre-tax accounts the rules reach, and which Roth accounts they exempt, is set out in the same guide's section on the Roth exemptions; enter a Roth balance and the calculator divides it like any other number, because the exemption is a rule about the account, not something the arithmetic can detect. The rules and ages this page relies on are those of federal law as of September 2026 and will change over time; irs.gov carries the current text, and the table lives in one place in the engine so that a future IRS revision is a single visible change rather than a hunt through page copy. The site's other explainers are collected under Guides.
Frequently asked questions
When do RMDs start?
The engine stores the start age as one named constant — 73, under the SECURE 2.0 Act as of September 2026 — and checks it before it consults the table, so an age below 73 returns an explanatory message rather than a zero-dollar result. The guide states the rest of the schedule: the start age is scheduled to rise to 75 beginning in 2033, and a special timing rule applies to the very first distribution. When the start age changes, that one constant is where every figure on this page follows from.
Which accounts require RMDs?
The calculator does not decide that; it divides whatever balance is entered. The guide states which pre-tax accounts the rules reach and which Roth accounts they exempt, and inherited accounts follow separate rules that this tool does not model. Entering a Roth balance produces a division like any other, because the exemption is a rule about the account, not something the arithmetic can detect.
Which table does this calculator use?
The IRS Uniform Lifetime Table, which applies to most account owners. The engine carries it as a single data file covering ages 73 through 120. The separate IRS table for an owner whose sole beneficiary is a much-younger spouse — irs.gov defines the threshold — gives a different divisor and is not modeled here.
Why does the required percentage rise every year?
Because the table's divisor falls with age and the RMD is the balance divided by that divisor. At 73 the divisor is 26.5, a 3.77% share of the balance; at 80 it is 20.2, a 4.95% share; at 90 it is 12.2, 8.2%. The dollar amount need not rise, because each year's division starts from a fresh December 31 balance.
Does the calculator use the current balance?
No. The formula uses the account balance on December 31 of the previous year, and that is what the balance field expects; entering a current balance produces a figure that is not the RMD the rule defines. The age field expects the age the owner reaches during the distribution year.
What happens if an RMD is missed?
The calculator cannot tell, because it has no input for what was actually withdrawn: it computes the amount the rule requires for the year and nothing after that. It therefore computes neither the excise tax on a shortfall nor the income tax on the distribution itself. The guide states the SECURE 2.0 excise-tax percentages and works the arithmetic on a sample shortfall; the section above on where the model stops repeats the percentages and explains why the tool cannot apply them.
Is the RMD the most I can withdraw?
No — the rule sets a floor, not a ceiling, and the guide covers that side of it. The calculator returns the minimum the rule requires for the year and nothing more: it has no input for what is actually withdrawn and no view on a larger amount. Whether a portfolio can sustain a chosen withdrawal pace across a whole retirement is drawdown arithmetic, which the Retirement Withdrawal Calculator and the guide to the 4% rule address; this division does not.
Not financial or tax advice: a general estimate using the Uniform Lifetime Table for account owners — inherited accounts, much-younger spousal beneficiaries, and multiple-account aggregation rules differ. Confirm with IRS Publication 590-B or a tax professional. Values are processed locally in your browser and never transmitted. See the methodology page.