IRS Single Life Expectancy Table (Inherited IRA RMD Divisors)

This dataset lists the IRS Single Life Expectancy Table — 26 CFR 1.401(a)(9)-9(b), Table 1 to Paragraph (b), also printed as Table I in Publication 590-B, Appendix B. It is the table beneficiaries of inherited accounts use, not the Uniform Lifetime Table an account owner uses for their own RMDs. For each age it gives the life-expectancy divisor and the equivalent required percentage of balance (1 ÷ divisor) in a year where that divisor applies. The table is sortable; the full data is also available as CSV and JSON below.

Full Single Life Expectancy Table (ages 0–120+)

Click any column header to sort. All 121 rows are shown — use your browser's find (Ctrl/Cmd+F) to locate a specific age, or download the CSV/JSON for offline analysis. The percentage column is the required share of the prior year-end balance in a year where that divisor applies; under the subtract-one method described below, most beneficiaries use the table itself only once.

CC-BY-4.0 — free for any use including republication and journalism, with attribution to QuantCalc Research.

Who uses this table

The Single Life Table drives annual required distributions from inherited retirement accounts. In broad strokes, under the SECURE Act rules settled by the July 2024 final regulations (T.D. 10001):

• Eligible designated beneficiaries (a surviving spouse, the owner's minor child until age 21, a disabled or chronically ill beneficiary, or anyone not more than 10 years younger than the owner) can take life-expectancy distributions: look up their age in this table once, in the first distribution year, then subtract one each year after.
• A sole surviving spouse beneficiary is the one exception to the set-once rule: a spouse re-reads the table at their attained age every year (and, from 2024, SECURE 2.0 §327 can shift a sole spouse onto the Uniform Lifetime Table instead — see the calculator page for the mechanics).
• Beneficiaries of owners who died before 2020 keep the grandfathered lifetime stretch on this table — with a one-time reset in 2022: go back to the first distribution year, look that age up in this (updated) table, and subtract one for each year since.
• Non-designated beneficiaries (an estate, or a trust that is not a see-through trust) of an owner who died on or after their required beginning date use the deceased owner's remaining life expectancy from this table — the “ghost” schedule.

The 10-year rule still carries annual RMDs in years 1–9

Most non-spouse beneficiaries of owners who died in 2020 or later fall under the SECURE Act's 10-year rule. Whether this table matters inside that window depends on when the owner died: if the owner died on or after their required beginning date, the final regulations require an annual distribution — computed from this table with the subtract-one method — in each of years 1 through 9, on top of emptying the account by December 31 of the tenth year. The preamble to T.D. 10001 (89 FR 58886, July 19, 2024) states the position directly: “The final regulations do not eliminate the requirement for continued annual distributions if an employee dies on or after the employee's required beginning date.” Those regulations apply to distribution calendar years beginning on or after January 1, 2025.

If the owner died before their required beginning date, nothing is required inside the window and the whole account is simply due by the year-10 deadline. The 10-year deadline page works a full schedule, and the calculator resolves which branch applies to a specific situation.

First-year lookup, then subtract one

Under 26 CFR 1.401(a)(9)-5(d), a non-spouse beneficiary taking life-expectancy distributions reads this table once — at their attained age in the first distribution calendar year (normally the year after the owner's death) — and then reduces that starting divisor by 1.0 for each later year. Looking your current age up again each year is the most common mistake; it overstates the divisor and understates the required amount. A year with no distribution still consumes a year of the divisor, and once the divisor reaches 1.0 or less the remaining balance must come out.

The schedule below is computed by the generator through the same functions the calculator uses (singleLifeFactor() for year one, reducedSingleLifeFactor() after), for a beneficiary aged 55 in the first distribution year (2027) with a $500,000 prior year-end balance, no growth, distributions at year end — the same example published on the 10-year deadline page:

Year 1 divides by the age-55 table value (31.6); year 2 divides by 31.6 − 1.0 = 30.6, not by the age-56 table value (30.6). The required share of the balance rises every year by construction.

Not the table account owners use

An account owner taking their own lifetime RMDs uses the Uniform Lifetime Table of 26 CFR 1.401(a)(9)-9(c) — a joint-and-survivor construction with much larger divisors. Both tables were adopted by the same T.D. 9930 and both are static. The gap is large at every overlapping age:

The Uniform Lifetime Table has its own pages — the 2026 RMD table and the 2027 RMD table (identical divisors, because that table is static regulation too) — and its own dataset at /data/rmd-table/2026/, whose scope note defers the Single Life Table to this page.

Methodology

Related

• Inherited IRA RMD calculator — the SECURE Act decision tree plus a year-by-year schedule from this table
• Inherited IRA 10-year deadline — the worked schedule this page's example matches
• Inherited IRA withdrawal amounts — the floor and ceiling on a $250,000 inherited IRA
• Uniform Lifetime Table 2026 and 2027 — the owner's table, with calculator
• RMD Table 2026 dataset — the Uniform Lifetime Table as CSV/JSON

Changelog

• v2026.1 (2026-08-12) — initial release. 121 ages transcribed from T.D. 9930 (85 FR 72472), cross-checked in both directions against the engine mirror and against 13 live-page figures.

Dataset license: CC-BY-4.0. QuantCalc is an independent retirement-planning research project. Not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by any state or federal agency. Not financial, tax, or legal advice.

@misc{quantcalc2026irssinglelifeexpectancytableinheritedira,
  title  = {IRS Single Life Expectancy Table (Inherited IRA RMD Divisors)},
  author = {{QuantCalc Research}},
  year   = {2026},
  url    = {https://quantcalc.app/data/single-life-expectancy-table/},
  note   = {Accessed <date>}
}