Enter your account balance as of last December 31 and your age this year to estimate your RMD using the IRS Uniform Lifetime Table.
A Required Minimum Distribution (RMD) is the minimum amount the IRS requires you to withdraw each year from most tax-deferred retirement accounts — Traditional IRAs, 401(k)s, and similar pre-tax accounts — once you reach the applicable starting age. It's calculated by dividing your account balance as of December 31 of the prior year by a life-expectancy divisor pulled from an IRS table, in this case the Uniform Lifetime Table used by most account owners. The result is the minimum you must withdraw and pay ordinary income tax on for that year.
As of the SECURE Act 2.0, RMDs generally start at age 73. This starting age has already changed more than once in recent years — it was previously age 70½, then raised to 72, then to 73 — and is scheduled to rise again to 75 in the future under current law, so it's worth confirming the exact current age with a tax advisor or irs.gov rather than assuming any single number stays fixed.
Missing all or part of an RMD can trigger a steep IRS excise tax penalty on the shortfall — historically 50% of the amount not withdrawn, though recent legislation reduced the standard penalty and allows it to be reduced further if the mistake is corrected within a set window. Because the exact penalty percentage and correction rules have changed and can change again, treat any specific number as something to verify with a tax professional rather than a fixed fact.
No — for the original account owner, Roth IRAs are not subject to lifetime RMDs, since contributions were already made with after-tax dollars and the IRS has no remaining tax interest in forcing withdrawals. Traditional IRAs, 401(k)s, and other pre-tax accounts do require RMDs starting at the applicable age; see the IRA Calculator and 401(k) Calculator to model those account types directly.
Worked example: a $500,000 balance as of the prior December 31, at age 75, uses a divisor of 24.6 from the Uniform Lifetime Table: RMD = 500,000 ÷ 24.6 ≈ $20,325.20 for the year. At age 80 instead, the divisor drops to 20.2, raising the RMD on the same balance to about $24,752.48 — the divisor shrinks every year as life expectancy decreases, so the required percentage withdrawn rises with age even if the balance doesn't change.