How Big Is My RMD? $500K vs $1M at Age 73 in 2026

Margaret turns 73 in 2026. She is a single filer in Ohio with a $750,000 traditional IRA — the December 31, 2025 statement balance. She wants one number: what must she withdraw this year? The answer is $28,302. That is $750,000 divided by 26.5, the IRS Uniform Lifetime Table factor for age 73. There is no income test, no phase-out, no filing-status adjustment in the formula itself. RMD calculation is a single division problem, and this page gives you the divisor, the worked numbers, and the one table that applies to you.

Margaret’s Ohio residency matters for the tax bill on that $28,302 — Ohio taxes IRA withdrawals as ordinary income on top of federal tax — but it does not change the RMD amount. The required distribution is identical whether you live in Texas, California, or Ohio, because the formula uses only the balance and the federal life-expectancy factor. State income tax determines what you keep after the RMD, not how large the RMD is. Keep those two questions separate: first compute the mandatory withdrawal, then plan the tax around it.

The formula: prior year-end balance ÷ your age factor

Every required minimum distribution comes from the same two inputs:

1. The account balance on December 31 of the prior year. For your 2026 RMD, that is your December 31, 2025 fair market value — the figure printed on your year-end statement. You do not use today’s balance, an average, or the date you actually withdraw.
2. The IRS life-expectancy factor for the age you reach this year. For most owners this comes from the Uniform Lifetime Table (IRS Pub. 590-B, Table III). At age 73 the factor is 26.5.

Divide the first by the second and you have your RMD:

RMD = (prior Dec-31 balance) ÷ (Uniform Lifetime factor)

At 73 the factor of 26.5 is equivalent to withdrawing about 3.77% of the balance (1 ÷ 26.5 = 0.0377). That percentage is the single most useful mental shortcut: in your first RMD year, you are pulling roughly 3.77 cents on every dollar of last year’s ending balance.

$500K vs. $1M at age 73: the numbers you can type in

Here are the two balances readers search most, at the age-73 factor of 26.5, plus the age-74 figure to show the year-over-year rise:

Notice the $1M line. The same million-dollar IRA owes $37,736 at 73 and $39,216 at 74 — an extra $1,480 even if the balance never changed. That is not a market effect. It is the divisor doing its job: the IRS table is designed to drain the account over your remaining life expectancy, so the required percentage rises every single year you live.

Why the percentage climbs every year

The Uniform Lifetime Table assigns a smaller divisor to each older age. A smaller divisor means a larger fraction of the balance must come out. Here is the trajectory, holding a flat $1,000,000 balance to isolate the divisor effect:

The factors above are from the current Uniform Lifetime Table that took effect in 2022 (Pub. 590-B, Table III). The headline figures — 26.5 at 73, 25.5 at 74 — are the ones you need for your first two RMD years; the later ages are shown so you can see where the curve goes. By your late 80s and 90s you are required to take more than 6% to 8% of the balance every year, which is exactly why RMDs can push retirees into higher tax brackets and trigger Medicare IRMAA surcharges later in life.

That tax ripple is worth seeing concretely. The $37,736 first-year RMD on a $1M IRA is ordinary income stacked on top of whatever else you report — Social Security, pension, interest, other withdrawals. A single filer already at the top of the 12% bracket ($48,475 of taxable income in 2026) would see that $37,736 taxed largely at 22%, roughly $8,300 of federal tax on the RMD alone, before any state income tax. By age 80 the same flat $1M owes $49,505, and by 90 it owes $81,967 — the required draw more than doubles over the retirement horizon even with zero growth. RMD income also counts toward the MAGI that sets your Medicare Part B premium two years later: a single retiree whose MAGI crosses $103,000 jumps from the $185.00 base premium into the first IRMAA tier at $259.00 per month, a surcharge driven partly by the mandatory withdrawal. None of this changes the RMD itself, but it is why the calculation is the starting point of decumulation planning, not the end of it.

The deadline math: your first RMD and the April 1 trap

The calculation tells you how much; the calendar tells you when. For every year except your first, the deadline is December 31. Miss it and the 25% penalty under SECURE 2.0 §302 attaches to the shortfall. Your very first RMD — the one for the year you turn 73 if you were born 1951–1959 — gets a one-time grace period: you may delay it until April 1 of the following year, the “required beginning date.”

That delay is a trap as often as a gift. If you turn 73 in 2026 and push your first RMD to April 1, 2027, you must still take your 2027 RMD by December 31, 2027 — so two distributions land in the same 2027 tax year. On a $1M IRA that is $37,736 (the 2026 amount) plus roughly $39,216 (the 2027 amount) totaling about $76,952 of ordinary income in one year, which can vault a single filer from the 22% bracket into the 24% bracket (which begins at $103,351 in 2026) and spike the IRMAA tier as well. The defensible default is to take your first RMD in the year you turn 73 rather than deferring it, unless you have a specific reason — like a low-income gap year — to bunch the income deliberately.

Which of the three IRS tables applies to you

IRS Publication 590-B contains three life-expectancy tables. Using the wrong one produces the wrong RMD, so match yourself to the right row:

For the overwhelming majority of readers asking “how is my RMD calculated,” the answer is the Uniform Lifetime Table. You only drop to Table II if your spouse is your sole named beneficiary and is more than ten years your junior — a narrow case that lowers your RMD. Table I is for inherited accounts, governed by the separate post-SECURE-Act beneficiary rules (IRC §401(a)(9)(H)), and is a different calculation path entirely.

The aggregation rule: one check for IRAs, separate checks for 401(k)s

Once you know each account’s RMD, the question is how many checks you have to write. The rule splits by account type:

• Traditional IRAs aggregate. Calculate the RMD for each IRA separately, then total them. You may withdraw that combined amount from any one IRA, or split it however you like across them. The IRS only cares that the total comes out.
• 403(b) accounts aggregate with each other — same rule as IRAs, but in their own separate bucket from IRAs.
• 401(k) and other employer plans do not aggregate. Each 401(k) must satisfy its own RMD from that specific plan. You cannot pull a 401(k) RMD from an IRA, and you cannot pull one 401(k)’s RMD from another 401(k).

Example: you hold two traditional IRAs ($400,000 and $300,000) and one old 401(k) ($200,000), all at age 73. The two IRAs owe a combined ($400,000 + $300,000) ÷ 26.5 = $26,415, which you can take entirely from the larger IRA. The 401(k) separately owes $200,000 ÷ 26.5 = $7,547, which must come out of that 401(k). Roth IRAs are excluded — they carry no lifetime RMD for the original owner.

The practical reason this rule exists matters when you have many accounts. Aggregating IRA RMDs lets you leave your best-performing or most tax-efficient IRA untouched and satisfy the whole IRA requirement from a single account — for example, draining a cash-heavy IRA first while letting an equity-heavy IRA keep compounding. The trap is the employer-plan exception: people roll several old 401(k)s into one IRA precisely so they can aggregate, then forget that any 401(k) they left in place still demands its own separate check. Miss that one 401(k) distribution and the 25% penalty applies to that account’s shortfall even if your IRAs were over-satisfied.

What most people miss: the balance is locked, and one premium reduces it

Three calculation details trip up even careful retirees:

• The balance is frozen at prior Dec-31. If the market fell 20% in January, your RMD does not shrink — it is still based on the December 31 figure. Conversely, a December 31 spike locks in a higher RMD for the whole next year. You cannot use a current or average balance.
• A QLAC premium comes off the top. Money you moved into a Qualified Longevity Annuity Contract — up to a $210,000 premium in 2026 under SECURE 2.0 §202 — is excluded from the year-end balance used to compute RMDs (Treas. Reg. §1.401(a)(9)-6). That is the one legitimate way to shrink the divisor’s base.
• Roth IRAs are out; Roth 401(k)s are now out too. Roth IRAs never required lifetime RMDs. As of 2024, SECURE 2.0 §325 also eliminated lifetime RMDs from Roth 401(k) accounts, so neither belongs in your RMD math while you are alive.

And the cost of getting it wrong is real: the penalty for an RMD you fail to take is 25% of the shortfall under SECURE 2.0 §302, dropped to 10% if you correct it within the two-year correction window and file Form 5329. That is down from the old 50% excise tax, but a 25% penalty on a $37,736 RMD is still nearly $9,400 — worth the two minutes of division.

Run your own number

Do this now with your real figures:

1. Find your December 31 prior-year balance on each traditional IRA and employer plan statement.
2. Look up your Uniform Lifetime factor for the age you reach this year (26.5 at 73, 25.5 at 74, 24.6 at 75).
3. Divide each balance by the factor.
4. Aggregate the IRA results into one number; keep each 401(k) result separate.
5. Withdraw by December 31 (or April 1 of next year only for your very first RMD — which then stacks two RMDs into one tax year).

Key takeaways

• The RMD formula is one division: prior December 31 balance ÷ your Uniform Lifetime factor. At age 73 the factor is 26.5, about 3.77% of the balance.
• At 73, a $500,000 IRA owes $18,868 and a $1,000,000 IRA owes $37,736. At 74 (factor 25.5) the same $1M owes $39,216 — the required percentage rises every year as the divisor shrinks.
• Most owners use the Uniform Lifetime Table. Use Joint Life only if a spouse 10+ years younger is your sole beneficiary; beneficiaries of inherited IRAs use the smaller Single Life factors.
• Total all your traditional IRA RMDs and take them from any one IRA, but satisfy each 401(k)’s RMD from that plan separately. Roth IRAs and (since 2024) Roth 401(k)s carry no lifetime RMD.
• The lever you actually control is the December 31 balance and where it sits: a QLAC premium (up to $210,000 in 2026) is excluded from the RMD base, and missing an RMD costs a 25% penalty (10% if corrected timely) under SECURE 2.0 §302.