The Decision Tree, in Order

Inherited IRA rules are confusing because four separate questions have to be answered in sequence, and the wrong answer to the first one makes every later answer wrong too. Work through them in this order.

Question 1: Did the original owner die before 2020?

If yes, the pre-SECURE rules are grandfathered. A designated beneficiary keeps the lifetime stretch: annual distributions over the beneficiary's own single life expectancy, set once and reduced by one each year. Nothing about the SECURE Act's 10-year rule reaches back to those accounts. The one thing that did change is the table — see the 2022 reset below.

If the owner died in 2020 or later, continue.

Question 2: Is the beneficiary a person at all?

An estate, a charity, or a trust that does not qualify as a see-through trust is a non-designated beneficiary. These never get the 10-year rule. Instead, if the owner died before their required beginning date, the whole account must come out by December 31 of the fifth year after death — the 5-year rule. If the owner died on or after that date, distributions run over the deceased owner's own remaining life expectancy, taken from the Single Life Table at the owner's age in the year of death and reduced by one each year afterward. Practitioners call that the "ghost" life expectancy, and for an owner who died in their seventies it is usually a longer runway than 10 years.

Question 3: Is the beneficiary an eligible designated beneficiary?

Five categories qualify: the surviving spouse, a minor child of the owner, a disabled individual, a chronically ill individual, and any individual who is not more than 10 years younger than the owner. That last one quietly covers a great many real cases — siblings, close-in-age partners, and anyone older than the decedent. An eligible designated beneficiary can generally take life expectancy distributions instead of the 10-year rule.

A minor child is the exception with a clock inside it. Minor status runs only to age 21 — not to the age of majority in the child's state, and not through college. At 21 the 10-year rule begins, so the account must be empty by December 31 of the year the child turns 31, with annual distributions continuing throughout.

Question 4: Did the owner die before or on/after their required beginning date?

This is the question that decides whether the 10-year rule carries annual distributions with it. The required beginning date is April 1 of the year after the year the owner reached their applicable RMD age — 73 for owners born from 1951 through 1959 and 75 for those born in 1960 or later under SECURE 2.0. Because it is an April 1 date and not a calendar-year boundary, a death in that particular year can land on either side of it, and the calculator flags that case instead of guessing.

The July 2024 Final Regulations Settled the Annual-RMD Question

From 2020 to 2024 nobody was certain whether the 10-year rule carried annual distributions. Treasury settled it on July 18, 2024 with the final regulations published as T.D. 10001. The answer preserved the "at least as rapidly" principle: once an owner has started taking RMDs, death does not switch them off.

Owner died…	Annual distributions in years 1–9?	Deadline to empty
Before the required beginning date	No — nothing is required until year 10	Dec 31 of the 10th year after death
On or after the required beginning date	Yes — every year, on the Single Life Table	Dec 31 of the 10th year after death

The regulations apply to distribution calendar years beginning on or after January 1, 2025. For the four years while the question was open, the IRS repeatedly excused missed distributions inside the 10-year window: Notice 2022-53 covered 2021 and 2022, Notice 2023-54 extended it to 2023, and Notice 2024-35 extended it once more to 2024. Those years were forgiven, not added back — the 10-year deadline was never pushed out, and the divisor kept counting down through every excused year.

Two consequences follow for 2026. Annual distributions are now squarely in force, and a beneficiary who skipped 2021 through 2024 has fewer remaining years to spread the same balance across, which is exactly the year-by-year picture the schedule above produces.

An Inherited Roth IRA: Same Deadline, No Annual Distributions

Everything above turns on one question — whether the original owner died before or on/after their required beginning date. For a Roth IRA that question has a single permanent answer. Under IRC §408A(c)(5) the lifetime required-distribution rules of §401(a)(9)(A) simply do not apply to a Roth IRA owner: there are no RMDs during the owner's life, so there is no required beginning date to be on the far side of. The regulations and Publication 590-B therefore treat a Roth IRA owner as having always died before their required beginning date, whatever age they reached.

That produces a cleaner set of outcomes than the traditional side:

• Designated beneficiary who is not an eligible designated beneficiary — the 10-year rule applies, but never with annual distributions. Nothing is required in years 1 through 9; the account has to be empty by December 31 of the tenth year after death.
• Eligible designated beneficiary — life expectancy distributions remain available exactly as on the traditional side, and a sole surviving spouse can still wait until the year the owner would have reached their applicable age.
• Estate, charity, or a non-see-through trust — no designated beneficiary and a death always before the required beginning date, so it is the 5-year rule. The ghost life expectancy never applies to a Roth IRA.

The tax picture is different too. A distribution from an inherited Roth IRA is generally free of income tax once the owner's 5-taxable-year period has run, and the years the decedent held the account count toward it — the clock is not restarted by the owner's death. That is why the usual advice for a non-eligible beneficiary flips: on a traditional account there is a case for spreading distributions to flatten the tax, and on a Roth account there is a case for leaving the balance untouched until year 10 so it keeps compounding tax-free. The Roth 5-year rule page maps that clock in detail.

Switch the account-type input at the top of the calculator to Roth IRA and the decision tree reflects all of this automatically.

The Single Life Table Is Not the Table You Have Seen Before

An account owner taking their own RMDs uses the Uniform Lifetime Table. A beneficiary of an inherited account uses the Single Life Table from 26 CFR 1.401(a)(9)-9(b), printed as Table I in Publication 590-B, Appendix B. They are not interchangeable, and the gap is large.

Age	Single Life (beneficiary)	Uniform Lifetime (owner)	Difference in required percentage
55	31.6	— (not yet applicable)	3.16% vs none
65	22.9	— (not yet applicable)	4.37% vs none
72	17.2	27.4	5.81% vs 3.65%
75	14.8	24.6	6.76% vs 4.07%
80	11.2	20.2	8.93% vs 4.95%

The second thing to know about the beneficiary table is that you normally look at it once. A non-spouse beneficiary reads their life expectancy at their attained age in the first distribution year and then subtracts 1.0 for every year after that — the reduce-by-one method. Looking your current age up again each year is the single most common mistake, and it understates the required amount. A sole surviving spouse beneficiary is the one exception: that beneficiary genuinely does re-read the table at their attained age every year.

Where the owner died on or after their required beginning date, the divisor is the greater of the beneficiary's remaining life expectancy and the deceased owner's remaining life expectancy. That matters when the beneficiary is older than the decedent, and the calculator applies it automatically.

The 2022 table reset

The Single Life Table above is the version that took effect for distribution calendar years beginning on or after January 1, 2022, adopted by T.D. 9930. A beneficiary whose distributions began before 2022 does not simply keep the old factor. The regulation's transition rule resets the starting point: go back to the calendar year the distributions began, look that age up in the new table, and then subtract one for each year since. This raises the divisor and lowers the required amount, and the calculator's schedule already builds it in for pre-2020 deaths.

The Surviving Spouse Has the Most Room

A surviving spouse is the only beneficiary who can stop being a beneficiary. The options, in rough order of how often they are used:

Treat it as your own, or roll it over. The account becomes the spouse's own IRA. Ordinary owner RMDs then begin at the spouse's own start age under the Uniform Lifetime Table, and the surviving spouse can name new beneficiaries. This is usually the strongest choice when the surviving spouse is younger than the decedent and does not need the money before 59½.

Stay a beneficiary. Distributions run over the spouse's life expectancy, recalculated from the Single Life Table each year. If the owner died before their required beginning date, a sole spouse beneficiary need not begin until the year the deceased owner would have reached their applicable age — often a long deferral. Staying a beneficiary also preserves access before 59½ without the early-distribution additional tax.

The Section 327 election. SECURE 2.0 added an election, effective from 2024, for a sole surviving spouse beneficiary to be treated as the deceased owner for RMD purposes. Where it applies, distributions are computed on the Uniform Lifetime Table rather than the Single Life Table, which produces a smaller required amount. The mechanics are final, not proposed: they were adopted in T.D. 10001 and sit at 26 CFR 1.401(a)(9)-5(g)(3), which also makes the election the default treatment for a sole spouse beneficiary of an owner who died before their required beginning date unless the plan or the spouse elects otherwise.

One trap worth naming: a spouse who starts under the 10-year rule and later rolls the account over has to make up the distributions that would have been required had the money been in their own IRA all along.

What These Distributions Do to Your Tax Year

An inherited traditional IRA distribution is ordinary income in the year you take it, and it stacks on top of wages, Social Security, and everything else. That is why the 10-year rule is a planning problem rather than a paperwork problem: a beneficiary in peak earning years who waits until year 10 and empties the account in one go can push a decade of deferred income through a single tax year.

Two knock-on effects catch people out. Larger income raises the taxable share of Social Security, and it can lift you into a higher Medicare premium tier two years later — the mechanics are the same ones on the RMD-to-IRMAA page. If you are already managing your own conversions, an inherited account's distributions consume bracket space that a Roth conversion would otherwise have used, so the two have to be planned together rather than separately. Our Roth Conversion Planner exists for exactly that overlap.

One genuine relief valve: a qualified charitable distribution can be made from an inherited IRA, and it counts toward the required amount. The age test applies to you, the beneficiary — you must be 70½ or older at the time of the transfer, regardless of how old the original owner was. The QCD calculator sizes that.

Do I have to take annual RMDs during the 10-year rule?

It depends on when the original owner died relative to their required beginning date. Under the final regulations issued as T.D. 10001 on July 18, 2024, a beneficiary subject to the 10-year rule must take an annual required minimum distribution in years 1 through 9 if the owner died on or after their required beginning date. If the owner died before that date, no annual distribution is required in any year before the tenth — the account simply has to be empty by the end of year 10. Those annual distributions became enforceable with the 2025 distribution year, after the IRS waived the excise tax for missed distributions from 2021 through 2024 in Notice 2022-53, Notice 2023-54, and Notice 2024-35.

What exactly is the 10-year rule for an inherited IRA?

The SECURE Act of 2019 replaced the lifetime stretch for most beneficiaries of owners who died in 2020 or later. A designated beneficiary who is not an eligible designated beneficiary must withdraw the entire account by December 31 of the year containing the tenth anniversary of the owner's death. So a death in 2026 produces a deadline of December 31, 2036. The 10-year clock is not extended by anything, and the deadline is a hard emptying date rather than a schedule of equal payments.

Who counts as an eligible designated beneficiary?

There are five categories: the surviving spouse, a minor child of the account owner, a disabled individual, a chronically ill individual, and any other individual who is not more than 10 years younger than the owner. An eligible designated beneficiary can generally take distributions over their own life expectancy instead of being pushed into the 10-year rule. A minor child keeps that status only until age 21; at 21 the 10-year rule starts running, so the account has to be empty by the end of the year that child turns 31.

What options does a surviving spouse have?

A surviving spouse has the widest set of choices of any beneficiary. The spouse can treat the IRA as their own or roll it into their own IRA, which restarts ordinary owner RMDs using the Uniform Lifetime Table at the spouse's own start age. The spouse can instead stay a beneficiary and take life expectancy distributions, recalculating their life expectancy from the Single Life Table each year rather than reducing a starting factor by one. If the owner died before their required beginning date, a sole spouse beneficiary can wait until the year the owner would have reached their applicable age before distributions must begin. Section 327 of the SECURE 2.0 Act, effective 2024, adds an election to be treated as the deceased owner.

Which table does an inherited IRA use, and what if the owner died before 2020?

Inherited accounts use the Single Life Table in 26 CFR 1.401(a)(9)-9(b), also printed as Table I in Publication 590-B, Appendix B. That is a different and much shorter table than the Uniform Lifetime Table an account owner uses — at age 75 the beneficiary divisor is 14.8 while the owner divisor is 24.6. If the original owner died before 2020, the pre-SECURE lifetime stretch is grandfathered and continues, and beneficiaries whose distributions began before 2022 reset their starting life expectancy under the updated table that took effect for 2022 and then reduce it by one for each year since.