This site on Ira dis­tri­b­u­tion rules is a a lit­tle tech­ni­cal and was cre­at­ed as a resource for finan­cial advi­sors and finan­cial plan­ners. Con­sumers may want to vis­it our con­sumer site on IRA dis­tri­b­u­tions.

Finan­cial advi­sors will find some of the more tech­ni­cal issues here such as exact­ly how sec­tion 72t is imple­ment­ed, how to take dis­tri­b­u­tions from just one IRA account if the client has sev­er­al and what hap­pens if your client miss­es a dis­tri­b­u­tion. Finan­cial advi­sors and finan­cial plan­ners may also want to send their clients and prospects a newslet­ter that can be focused on IRA dis­tri­b­u­tion and man­age­ment issues.

RMD Tables Needed to Comply with IRA Distribution Rules

There are three sets of tables for tak­ing required distributions.

• RMD Table used by the IRA own­er who is sin­gle or married
• RMD Tables used by the IRA own­ers who is mar­ried, has named
  his spouse as ben­e­fi­cia­ry and that spouse is more than 10
  years younger
• RMD Tables used by IRA Beneficiaries

IRA distribution rules for IRA or qualified plan account owners

The fol­low­ing RMD table, to be used by the IRA own­er is employed as follows.

Fig­ure your required min­i­mum dis­tri­b­u­tion for each year by divid­ing the IRA account bal­ance (defined next) as of the close of busi­ness on Decem­ber 31 of the pre­ced­ing year by the applic­a­ble dis­tri­b­u­tion peri­od or life expectan­cy (a num­ber you get the from IRS tables below). The IRA account bal­ance is the amount in the IRA at the end of the year pre­ced­ing the year for which the required min­i­mum dis­tri­b­u­tion is being figured.

Let’s take an example:

Lau­ra was born on Octo­ber 1, 1934. She is an unmar­ried par­tic­i­pant in a qual­i­fied defined con­tri­bu­tion plan. She reach­es age 70 ¹⁄₂ in 2005. Her required begin­ning date is April 1, 2006. As of Decem­ber 31, 2004, her account bal­ance was $26,500. The amount is dis­trib­uted to her on April 1, 2006 is $1000 ($26,500 / 26.5).

Note, that the account bal­ance of the IRA as of 12/31/04 would have been adjust­ed upward for any amounts rolled over to a Roth that were lat­er re-char­ac­ter­ized (put back in the IRA) or out­stand­ing amounts rolled over (i.e. amounts in tran­sit not in any account as of 12/31/04). In oth­er words, IRS clos­es the pos­si­bil­i­ty of manip­u­lat­ing the IRA bal­ance as of 12/31/04). Each year this process is repeat­ed with the pri­or year’s year end IRA bal­ance being divid­ed by the fac­tor on the table below relat­ed to the IRA own­er’s age.

 

RMD Table III
(Uni­form Lifetime)
(For Use by: Unmar­ried Owners, Mar­ried Own­ers Whose Spouses Are Not More Than 10 Years Younger, and Mar­ried Own­ers Whose Spouses Are Not the Sole Ben­e­fi­cia­ries of their IRAs)
Age	Dis­tri­b­u­tion Period	Age	Dis­tri­b­u­tion Period
70	27.4	93	9.6
71	26.5	94	9.1
72	25.6	95	8.6
73	24.7	96	8.1
74	23.8	97	7.6
75	22.9	98	7.1
76	22.0	99	6.7
77	21.2	100	6.3
78	20.3	101	5.9
79	19.5	102	5.5
80	18.7	103	5.2
81	17.9	104	4.9
82	17.1	105	4.5
83	16.3	106	4.2
84	15.5	107	3.9
85	14.8	108	3.7
86	14.1	109	3.4
87	13.4	110	3.1
88	12.7	111	2.9
89	12.0	112	2.6
90	11.4	113	2.4
91	10.8	114	2.1
92	10.2	115 and over	1.9

 

IRA distribution rules — spouse more than 10 years younger

If the plan own­er names a spouse as sole ben­e­fi­cia­ry who is more than 10 years his junior, then oth­er tables are used based on joint life expectan­cy. This can be found at the back of IRS Pub­li­ca­tion 590‑B. Note: Your mar­i­tal sta­tus is deter­mined as of Jan­u­ary 1 of each year. If you are mar­ried on Jan­u­ary 1 but get divorced or your spouse dies dur­ing the year, your spouse as of Jan­u­ary 1 remains your sole ben­e­fi­cia­ry for that year. For pur­pos­es of deter­min­ing your dis­tri­b­u­tion peri­od, a change in ben­e­fi­cia­ry is effec­tive in the year fol­low­ing the year of death or divorce.

If your spouse is the sole ben­e­fi­cia­ry of your IRA, and he or she dies before you, your spouse will not fail to be your sole ben­e­fi­cia­ry for the year that he or she died sole­ly because some­one oth­er than your spouse is named a ben­e­fi­cia­ry for the rest of that year.

How­ev­er, if you get divorced dur­ing the year and change the ben­e­fi­cia­ry des­ig­na­tion on the IRA dur­ing that same year, your for­mer spouse will not be treat­ed as the sole ben­e­fi­cia­ry for that year.

IRA distribution rules — for IRA beneficiaries

If you inher­it an IRA, the the IRA dis­tri­b­u­tion rules are the sim­i­lar to the own­er. Except you use a spe­cial table for ben­e­fi­cia­ries and rather than ever look­ing at the table again after your first dis­tri­b­u­tion, you sim­ply sub­tract 1 from the divisor.

Exam­ple:

Your father died in 2004. You are the des­ig­nat­ed ben­e­fi­cia­ry of your father’s tra­di­tion­al IRA. You are 53 years old in 2005. You use the Table for ben­e­fi­cia­ries below and see that your life expectan­cy in 2005 is 31.4. If the IRA was worth $100,000 at the end of 2004, your required min­i­mum dis­tri­b­u­tion for
2005 is $3,185 ($100,000 ÷ 31.4). Let’s say at the end of 2005, the IRA is again worth $100,000, you dis­trib­ute $3289 ($100,000/30.4) because each year you sub­tract 1 from your orig­i­nal divisor.

Note that this process of the ben­e­fi­cia­ry slow­ly emp­ty­ing the IRA over their life­time is called the stretch IRA. Many par­ents may want their chil­dren to have this advan­tage. There’s only one problem.

The ben­e­fi­cia­ries can emp­ty the IRA as fast as they desire, can take the hole account, pay the tax and blow it in a week­end in Vegas (or sim­ply sit at home and put it up their nose). This can be con­trolled when you name a trust as IRA beneficiary. 

Single Life Expectancy RMD Table (for Inherited IRAs) (For cal­cu­lat­ing post-death required distributions to beneficiaries) (From IRS Pub­li­ca­tion 590)
Age of IRA or Plan Beneficiary	Life Expectan­cy (in years)	Age of IRA or Plan Beneficiary	Life Expectan­cy (in years)	Age of IRA or Plan Beneficiary	Life Expectan­cy (in years)
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10	82.4 81.6 80.6 79.7 78.7 77.7 76.7 75.8 74.8 73.8 72.8	41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50	42.7 41.7 40.7 39.8 38.8 37.9 37.0 36.0 35.1 34.2	81 82 83 84 85 86 87 88 89 90	9.7 9.1 8.6 8.1 7.6 7.1 6.7 6.3 5.9 5.5
11 12 13 14 15	71.8 70.8 69.9 68.9 67.9	51 52 53 54 55	33.3 32.3 31.4 30.5 29.6	91 92 93 94 95	5.2 4.9 4.6 4.3 4.1
16 17 18 19 20	66.9 66.0 65.0 64.0 63.0	56 57 58 59 60	28.7 27.9 27.0 26.1 25.2	96 97 98 99 100	3.8 3.6 3.4 3.1 2.9
21 22 23 24 25	62.1 61.1 60.1 59.1 58.2	61 62 63 64 65	24.4 23.5 22.7 21.8 21.0	101 102 103 104 105	2.7 2.5 2.3 2.1 1.9