The RMD Deadline, and a Smarter Way to Meet It
What's due by December 31, the 25% penalty for missing it, and how a qualified charitable distribution satisfies your RMD without raising taxable income.
If you turned 73 this year, or you have been taking required minimum distributions for a while, there is a specific set of numbers worth knowing before December. Not because the deadline is dramatic, but because the rules around it are more precise than most people realize.
The Deadline, Precisely
If this is your first RMD year, you have until April 1st of the following year to take it. Doing that means two RMDs land in the same tax year, which can push income into a higher bracket than necessary. Every RMD after the first is due December 31st, no extensions.
One detail that trips people up with multiple accounts: RMDs from several IRAs can generally be aggregated and taken from one of them. RMDs from a 401(k) cannot. Each employer plan needs its own distribution.
What Happens If It Is Missed
The penalty is 25% of the amount that should have been withdrawn, reduced to 10% if corrected within two years with the right paperwork filed. It is a well-defined rule with a well-defined fix, and it is among the most avoidable items in the tax code with a few weeks of lead time.
The Qualified Charitable Distribution
If you are 70½ or older and give to charity, a qualified charitable distribution (QCD) lets you send up to $111,000 directly from your traditional IRA to a qualified charity in 2026. The amount is excluded from taxable income entirely, and it counts toward satisfying your RMD.
This is materially different from taking the distribution and writing a check to a charity. A QCD does not require you to itemize, and because it never enters adjusted gross income, it can keep you below thresholds that a regular withdrawal would push you across — including the income figure that sets your Medicare premium two years later.
Two eligibility details matter here. Donor-advised funds, private foundations, and supporting organizations do not qualify as recipients, which is the most common reason a gift intended as a QCD does not count as one. If you have made deductible IRA contributions after age 70½, those contributions reduce the amount you can exclude, dollar for dollar, and cumulatively. That second rule only reaches people still working and still funding a deductible IRA but when it applies, it is rarely anticipated.
The mechanics are unforgiving in one respect: the funds have to be payable to the charity, never to you. A check made out to the organization may be mailed to you to deliver, and that still qualifies. A distribution deposited into your own account and then donated is a taxable withdrawal followed by a gift, and the benefit is gone.
A Practical Sequence
Confirm your December 31 balance from last year is the figure your custodian is using. Confirm any QCDs already made this year are being credited toward your RMD correctly. And if a QCD is part of the plan, initiate it early — the first dollars out of an IRA each year are generally treated as satisfying the RMD, so a QCD made after you have already taken the full distribution cannot be applied retroactively.
The Windward Approach
We calculate RMDs alongside the rest of the tax picture each fall rather than in isolation, so there is time to decide whether a QCD makes sense, whether the timing interacts with a Roth conversion, and which account the withdrawal should come from.
Download our one-page tool for confirming your distribution amount, tracking what has already been taken, and checking whether a QCD fits your situation.
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