Inherited IRA Calculator
The account, the death, and your own income
Your result will appear here
Fill in the fields on the left and this updates as you type.
Know what this estimate is based on
- Jurisdiction
- General mathematical model
- Scope and limitations
- Long-range scenario, not a guarantee. Small changes in returns, inflation, fees, taxes, and withdrawal timing can materially change the result.
- Source links checked
- Jul 30, 2026
Built and regression-tested by Smart Tools Lab. It has not been individually reviewed by a licensed financial, tax, or legal professional.
How to use
- 01
Enter the balance in the inherited account and the return you expect on whatever stays in it.
- 02
Enter your own taxable income before any distribution. The whole comparison is about which bracket the money lands on top of, so this is the figure that decides the answer.
- 03
Enter the original owner's age in the year they died, and check the age required distributions had to begin — 73 today, 75 for anyone born in 1960 or later. Together they decide whether an annual distribution is due inside the window.
- 04
Enter your age in the calendar year AFTER the death, then look up the matching Single Life Table factor in Table I of IRS Publication 590-B. That factor is fixed at that age forever and drops by exactly one each year afterwards.
- 05
Read the year-by-year table: what an even withdrawal costs in tax against what taking only the minimum and letting the rest land in the final year costs, and check the branch stats to see which beneficiary class is actually yours.
Formula
Annual minimum = the account balance ÷ (the Single Life Table factor at your age in the year after the death, minus one for each year since). The divisor never goes below 1 and you never re-enter the table. Even spread = balance × r ÷ ((1 + r) × (1 − (1 + r)⁻ⁿ)), the level withdrawal that empties the account across the remaining n years when each withdrawal is taken at the start of the year. Tax on either path = the federal tax on your other income plus the year's distribution, less the tax on your other income alone — the distribution straddles brackets rather than sitting in one.
Example
A $400,000 inherited IRA earning 6%, alongside $95,000 of your own taxable income. The owner died at 78 — past 73, so an annual distribution is required — and you were 55 in the year after the death, giving a Single Life factor of 31.6. Take only the minimum and year one is $400,000 ÷ 31.6 = $12,658, rising to $20,175 by year nine, and then $483,319 has to come out in year ten: $628,779 distributed in total, $188,553 of federal tax, $440,226 kept, with that final distribution climbing to the 35% bracket. Spread the same account evenly and it is $51,271 a year, never leaving the 24% bracket: $512,709 distributed, $120,910 of tax, $391,799 kept. Spreading saves $67,643 of tax — while the balloon path pays out $116,070 more gross, because the money stayed invested longer.
Definitions
- Ten-year rule
- The account must be empty by December 31 of the year containing the tenth anniversary of the death. The clock starts the year after, so a 2026 death means a 2036 deadline.
- Eligible designated beneficiary
- A spouse, the owner's own minor child, a disabled or chronically ill person, or anyone not more than ten years younger than the owner. Stretches over life expectancy with no ten-year deadline.
- Required beginning date
- April 1 of the year after the owner reached 73. Whether the death fell before or after it decides whether annual distributions run inside the ten-year window.
- Single Life Table
- Table I of IRS Publication 590-B. Fixed at your age in the year after the death and reduced by one each year — unlike the Uniform Lifetime Table an account owner re-enters every year.
Good to know
The stretch is gone, and what replaced it is not simpler
Before 2020 an inherited IRA was the best asset in the tax code. A non-spouse beneficiary took a small annual distribution over their own life expectancy — a 40-year-old could spread a parent's account across more than forty years — and the balance compounded tax-deferred behind it. The SECURE Act ended that for almost everybody who inherits from an owner who died after 2019: the account has to be empty by December 31 of the year containing the tenth anniversary of the death. What made the change hard was not the deadline but the ambiguity that followed it. Practitioners read the statute as meaning nothing had to come out until year ten, the IRS proposed regulations in 2022 saying otherwise, and four consecutive years of penalty relief followed while the argument ran. The final regulations landed in July 2024 and sided against the profession: where the owner had already begun taking distributions, an annual distribution is required inside the window as well. 2025 was the first year that was enforced, which is recent enough that a great many calculators — and a fair number of custodians — are still giving the 2020 answer.
One date decides everything
The single fact that shapes the whole schedule is whether the original owner died before or on or after their required beginning date. That date is April 1 of the year following the year they reached 73 — a date, not an age, which is why an owner who died in the year they turned 73 can fall on either side of it. Die before it and distributions had never started, so there is nothing that must continue: the beneficiary can take nothing for nine years and empty the account on the last day of the tenth. Die on or after it and the at-least-as-rapidly rule attaches. Distributions had begun and the law does not let them stop, so the beneficiary owes both an annual distribution in each year and full liquidation at the end. The divisor for those annual amounts is fixed once, at the beneficiary's age in the calendar year after the death, and reduced by exactly one every year afterwards — you never re-enter the table the way an account owner does. That has a sting in it for anyone who relied on the waivers: the skipped years never have to be made up, but they still consumed their share of the divisor, so a beneficiary restarting in 2025 divides by a smaller number than they expect.
The five categories nobody can compute for you
An eligible designated beneficiary escapes the ten-year rule entirely and stretches over life expectancy. There are exactly five: the owner's surviving spouse, the owner's own minor child, a disabled individual, a chronically ill individual, and anyone not more than ten years younger than the owner. Only the last of those is a number, and only the last can be derived from anything a calculator asks. The other four are facts about a person, which is why this page computes every branch and reports them side by side rather than pretending to know. Two traps live in that list. The minor-child category covers the owner's OWN child and nobody else — a 12-year-old grandchild is not an eligible designated beneficiary and takes the flat ten years from day one, which is the most commonly botched point in the whole regime. And a beneficiary who is not an individual at all, an estate or a non-see-through trust, is not a designated beneficiary either: they fall to a five-year rule where the owner died before the required beginning date, or to the owner's own remaining life expectancy where they did not.
Why year ten is the expensive year
The deadline is not the problem. The bracket is. A ten-year window arriving in the middle of a beneficiary's highest-earning decade means the account has to be drained on top of a salary, and if nothing comes out until the deadline, the whole balance lands in one tax year. On the numbers this page opens with — a $400,000 account earning 6% alongside $95,000 of other income — that final distribution is $483,319, and it does not sit in one bracket: it climbs from 22% through 24% and 32% into 35%. The same account spread evenly is $51,271 a year and never leaves 24%, which is $67,643 less federal tax across the decade. The honest complication is that spreading is not free. Money taken out early stops compounding inside the account, so the balloon path pays out $116,070 more gross even after tax — you are buying a lower rate with a shorter runway, and which side wins depends on what the money would earn outside the wrapper. The two moves that genuinely help are choosing the years rather than the amounts: take more in a year you are between jobs, retired, or otherwise low, and less in a year a bonus lands. Nothing about the ten-year rule requires equal instalments — only that the account is empty at the end.
The surviving spouse plays a different game
A spouse is the only beneficiary with a real menu, and the choice is not obviously one-sided. Treating the account as your own stops it being inherited: distributions then wait until your own required beginning age and run on the Uniform Lifetime Table, which produces the smallest required amounts available anywhere. But it also converts money a beneficiary could take at any age into money the 10% early-withdrawal penalty reaches before 59½, which is exactly why a widowed 55-year-old who needs the cash should usually wait. Remaining a beneficiary keeps that penalty-free access and comes with a calculation no other beneficiary gets: a sole spouse beneficiary re-enters the Single Life Table at their new age every single year rather than subtracting one, so the divisor barely shrinks. A third route arrived with SECURE 2.0 in 2024 — electing to be treated as the deceased employee, which pairs the deceased spouse's timing with the surviving spouse's own table. It is statute and in force, but IRS Announcement 2026-7 postponed the regulations that would make its mechanics binding to no earlier than 2027, so 2026 runs on a good-faith reading of the words. That is worth knowing before building a plan on the third option.
Frequently asked questions
Do I have to take something every year, or can I wait until year ten?
It depends entirely on one fact about the person who died. If they died on or after their required beginning date, distributions had already started and the law does not let them stop — you owe an annual distribution in every year of the window AND the account has to be empty at the end of it. If they died before that date, nothing is required until the final year and you may legally take nothing at all until then. The final regulations settled this in July 2024, the penalty was waived for 2021 through 2024, and 2025 was the first enforced year.
What is the required beginning date, exactly?
April 1 of the year FOLLOWING the year the owner reached 73. It is a date, not an age, and that distinction decides the whole schedule: an owner who died in the year they turned 73, before that April 1, died before their required beginning date even though their age says 73. This is why the page reports both schedules rather than picking one for you.
Who counts as an eligible designated beneficiary?
Five categories, fixed as of the date of death: the owner's surviving spouse, the owner's own minor child, someone disabled, someone chronically ill, and anyone not more than ten years younger than the owner. An eligible designated beneficiary stretches over life expectancy and has no ten-year deadline at all. Everybody else who is an individual empties the account inside the window, whatever their age — a 12-year-old grandchild included.
My child inherited as a minor. What happens at 21?
Only the owner's OWN minor child qualifies, and majority is a flat 21 under the final regulations whatever the state's own age is — the still-in-school extension to 26 appeared in the 2022 proposed rules and was dropped. The child takes life-expectancy payments to 21 and then starts a fresh ten-year window, so the total runs to about 31. Annual distributions continue right through that second stretch even where the owner died before the required beginning date, because payments had already begun.
Is an inherited Roth IRA any different?
The ten-year deadline is identical. The annual distribution disappears entirely: a Roth owner never has a required beginning date, so the regulations treat every Roth owner as having died before it and the at-least-as-rapidly rule can never attach. Waiting the full ten years is then almost always right, because every extra year is tax-free growth. The decedent's five-year holding clock carries over to you rather than restarting.
Can I move it into my own IRA?
Not unless you are the surviving spouse. A non-spouse beneficiary has no 60-day rollover, cannot combine it with their own IRA and cannot convert it to a Roth. Moving it at all means a direct trustee-to-trustee transfer into another inherited IRA still titled in the deceased owner's name for your benefit. Taking the cash to move it yourself distributes the whole account in one taxable year and cannot be undone.
What if I miss a required distribution?
The excise tax is 25% of the shortfall, reduced to 10% if you correct it within a two-year correction window, and waivable altogether for reasonable error on Form 5329. The years that were waived — 2021 through 2024 — never have to be made up, but they still burned their share of the divisor, so a beneficiary who skipped them faces a smaller divisor and a larger required amount now rather than a fresh start.