Qualified Charitable Distribution Calculator
The gift, your age, and this year's distribution
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 gift you want to make and your age to the half year — a QCD opens at 70½ exactly, on the day you reach it rather than in January of that year.
- 02
Enter this year's required distribution if you have one. Leave it at zero if you are not there yet; the gift still does its other job.
- 03
Enter your other income and your other itemized deductions, excluding the gift itself. Those two decide whether deducting the gift on a return would be worth anything at all.
- 04
Add your marginal tax rate, and check the standard deduction field carries your filing status's figure.
- 05
Read the tax saved, then the stat beside it showing what deducting the same gift would have been worth — for most retirees that second figure is zero, and the gap between them is the whole case.
Formula
QCD route: adjusted gross income = other income + (the required distribution − the amount given), and the gift buys no deduction because it was never income. Check route: adjusted gross income = other income + the whole required distribution, and the gift is deductible only above 0.5% of that AGI, only up to 60% of it, and only to the extent your itemized total then beats the standard deduction. Tax saved = (taxable income on the check route − taxable income on the QCD route) × your marginal rate.
Example
A $10,000 gift at 74, against a $23,529 required distribution — a $600,000 IRA divided by the 25.5 Uniform Lifetime factor — plus $78,000 of other income, $4,000 of other itemized deductions and a 22% marginal rate. Take the distribution and write the check: AGI is $101,529, the gift deducts $9,492 after the new 0.5% floor of $508, and $4,000 + $9,492 = $13,492 still falls short of the $16,100 standard deduction — so the gift deducts nothing at all and the tax is $18,794. Send it straight from the IRA instead: $10,000 of the required distribution never becomes income, AGI is $91,529, and the tax is $16,594. The QCD saves $2,200 — exactly 22 cents on every dollar given, against nothing for the same gift deducted.
Definitions
- Qualified charitable distribution
- A transfer straight from an IRA to a public charity, excluded from income entirely. Limited to $111,000 per person for 2026 and available from age 70½.
- Exclusion, not deduction
- The distinction the whole tool rests on. A deduction subtracts income that has been counted; an exclusion means it was never counted, so everything keyed to adjusted gross income never sees it.
- The 70½ gap
- The two-and-a-half years between the age a QCD becomes available and the age required distributions begin — a window with no requirement to satisfy and the same tax treatment.
Good to know
A deduction most retirees never get
The charitable deduction is one of the best-known lines in the tax code and one of the least used. Before 2018 about three filers in ten itemized; the standard deduction was roughly doubled that year and the share collapsed to under one in ten, and retirees — who typically have a paid-off house, little state income tax and modest medical bills — are among the least likely to clear it. For all of them, giving to charity and deducting it changes their federal tax by exactly nothing. The deduction is real, the gift is real, and the benefit is zero. That is the gap a qualified charitable distribution fills. It is not a deduction at all: it is an exclusion, and the difference is structural rather than semantic. A deduction subtracts income that has already been counted. An exclusion means the money was never income in the first place, so nothing on the return ever sees it, and no Schedule A, no floor and no ceiling stand between the gift and the tax saved. For a retiree taking the standard deduction, the same gift goes from being worth nothing to being worth their full marginal rate.
The two ages that do not match
Congress created the QCD at age 70½ back when required minimum distributions also began at 70½, and the two moved apart. SECURE pushed the distribution age to 72 in 2019, SECURE 2.0 pushed it to 73 in 2023 and schedules it to reach 75 in 2033 — and the QCD age never moved at all, because it is written in the statute as a fixed 70½ with no indexing clause. What is left is a widening gap in which a QCD is allowed but there is no required distribution to satisfy. The instinct is to treat those as wasted years. They are the opposite. A gift made in the gap leaves your income exactly as a later one would, and it also permanently removes itself from the balance that every future required distribution is divided out of — so a $10,000 gift at 71 shrinks the required amount at 73, at 74, and in every year after that, along with the tax on all of them. The other half of the 70½ rule catches people out in the first year: eligibility runs from the day you actually reach 70½, not from January of the year you reach it, so a gift sent in the wrong month is simply a taxable distribution.
The rules that void it, and the form that hides it
A QCD has more ways to fail than most tax moves, and every one of them is all-or-nothing. The money must go direct from the IRA custodian to the charity — a check the custodian makes payable to the charity but mails to you is fine, provided you do not cash it, but money that lands in your own account first is a distribution and cannot be undone. The recipient has to be a public charity: a donor-advised fund, a private foundation and a supporting organization are all excluded, which rules out the vehicle a large share of donors already use. You can receive nothing in return, and you need the same contemporaneous written acknowledgment a deducted gift needs. Only an IRA can make one — never a 401(k), a 403(b) or a governmental 457(b), and not a SEP or SIMPLE still receiving employer contributions. And one anti-abuse rule reaches anyone still working: deductible IRA contributions made from 70½ onward reduce your lifetime QCD exclusion dollar for dollar, cumulatively and permanently. Then there is the reporting. The custodian's 1099-R shows the whole distribution as taxable and says nothing about a QCD, because the custodian has no way to know. It falls to you or your preparer to put the gross on line 4a, the taxable remainder on line 4b, and write QCD beside it — and where a QCD goes wrong on a return, it usually goes wrong right there.
What lower income buys beyond the bracket
Pricing a QCD at your marginal rate understates it, sometimes badly, because adjusted gross income is a control variable for half the retirement tax system. The Medicare income-related surcharge is set from AGI two years earlier and moves in cliff steps, so a single dollar over a threshold can cost several hundred a month for a year. The provisional-income test that decides how much of a Social Security benefit is taxable counts the same distribution, and inside its phase-in bands each extra dollar of income drags 50 or 85 cents of benefit into tax alongside it — the effect widely known as the tax torpedo. The floor under a medical deduction is 7.5% of AGI, so a higher AGI raises the bar on the one deduction a retiree with real bills might actually clear. Most states start their own calculation from federal AGI. A charitable deduction cancels income after every one of those tests has already seen it. A QCD stops the income arriving, so none of them do. For a household near a Medicare threshold or inside the Social Security phase-in band, that second-order saving can be larger than the bracket saving the headline figure reports.
Frequently asked questions
Why is a QCD better than just deducting the gift?
Because a deduction only cancels income that has already been counted, while a QCD stops the income arriving. Since 2018 most retirees take the standard deduction, so a charitable gift on Schedule A changes their tax by exactly nothing — the deduction is real and the benefit is zero. A QCD needs no Schedule A, no itemizing and no floor to clear: it is worth your full marginal rate on every dollar.
Why 70½ and not 73?
Because Congress moved the required-distribution age twice and never moved the QCD age with it. The mismatch leaves a two-and-a-half-year window in which a QCD is allowed but there is no requirement to satisfy — and giving in those years is better, not worse: the money leaves your income anyway, and it permanently removes itself from the balance that every later required distribution is divided out of, shrinking all of them.
Does it count toward my required distribution?
Dollar for dollar, up to the amount actually given. But order matters: the first dollars out of an IRA in a year are treated as satisfying the requirement, so a QCD sent after you have already taken the full amount in cash satisfies nothing. It is still excluded from income — you just met the requirement with taxable money instead.
Which charities qualify?
Public charities only. A donor-advised fund, a private foundation and a supporting organization are all excluded, which rules out the vehicle a great many donors already use. You can take nothing back — not a dinner, not a raffle ticket — and you need the same contemporaneous written acknowledgment any deducted gift needs. The money must go direct from the custodian to the charity and never through your own account.
Can I do one from a 401(k)?
No. A QCD comes only from an IRA. A 401(k), a 403(b) and a governmental 457(b) cannot make one, and neither can a SEP or SIMPLE IRA that is still receiving employer contributions. Rolling a workplace plan into an IRA first is the standard fix, and it has to happen before the distribution rather than after. An inherited IRA can make one if the beneficiary is themselves past 70½.
Will my 1099-R show it?
No, and this is where QCDs go wrong every year. The custodian reports the full distribution as though all of it were taxable. It is you or your preparer who enters the gross amount on line 4a of the 1040, the taxable remainder on line 4b, and writes QCD beside it. Nothing on the paperwork will do that for you.
Is there a catch if I am still working past 70½?
One, and it is permanent. Deductible IRA contributions made from 70½ onward reduce the amount you can exclude as a QCD, dollar for dollar and cumulatively for the rest of your life — so someone who deducted $7,000 a year for three years has $21,000 less QCD room forever. A Roth contribution or a nondeductible one does not count against it.