Two in one year
Delaying your first required withdrawal stacks both years into 2027
WHAT CHANGED?
If you have money in a traditional IRA or an old workplace retirement account and you are past 73, start with the reassuring part: none of this is complicated, and you have nearly three months to handle it. December 31 is the hard date for this year's required withdrawal, and the amount is a straight calculation the company holding your account will do for you on request.
What catches people is the penalty, which is unusually steep. Miss the withdrawal and the IRS charges an excise tax of 25% of the amount you should have taken. Not 25% of the tax on it. 25% of the money itself. Fix it promptly and that falls to 10%.
And there is a second date that almost nobody uses well. If you turned 73 at any point during 2026, this is your first required withdrawal, and the rules let you wait until April 1, 2027 to take it. That extension is real. It is also the most expensive thing in this issue.
WHO IS AFFECTED?
Anyone 73 or older with a traditional IRA, a SEP or SIMPLE IRA, or an old 401(k) or 403(b). The withdrawal is required whether or not you need the money this year.
Anyone who turned 73 during 2026. You are the group with the April choice in front of you, and it has to be settled before the year closes.
Not you, if your savings sit in a Roth IRA. Those carry no required withdrawal while you are alive, though an inherited account follows different rules.
WHAT DOES IT MEAN?
Here is why that April extension usually costs more than it saves. Waiting does not cancel your 2026 withdrawal. It moves it into 2027, where your 2027 withdrawal is already waiting. Both land in the same tax year.
One doubled year can reach further than your tax bill. More of your Social Security becomes taxable once your combined income passes $25,000 filing on your own or $32,000 filing jointly. And Social Security sets your Medicare premium from the tax return you filed two years earlier, so a heavy 2027 can quietly raise what you pay in 2029.
The other thing I would want my own mother to know is how easily people come up short by accident. If you hold several IRAs, you may add their required amounts together and take the whole sum from whichever one you prefer. Old 401(k) and 403(b) accounts do not work that way. Each one owes its own withdrawal, out of itself. Two accounts, two withdrawals.
WHAT TO DO
Ask whoever holds the account for one thing in writing this week: your required withdrawal amount for 2026, account by account. Then schedule the money to come out well before December 31 rather than in the last week of the year, when transfer desks are slowest and a late trade becomes your problem. If you would rather check the arithmetic yourself, the IRS publishes a one-page worksheet with the age tables behind it. And if you turned 73 this year, take that first withdrawal in 2026 unless a tax preparer has looked at both years and told you otherwise.
If you want the fuller picture on paper, how a withdrawal moves your Social Security taxes and your Medicare premium and where a Roth conversion fits, The Retirement Tax & Withdrawal Planner is our own $47 guide, with a chapter on this exact choice.
SOURCE: the IRS's required minimum distribution rules
Written by Ellen Marsh
Retirement Money Brief is educational information only — not financial, tax, or legal advice. We will never ask you for an account number, Social Security number, password, or payment.