Take what the table requires — from the right account, on the right calendar

Do this in order

1. Write the birth year and the account list on one page. Born 1951–1959: start age 73. Born 1960+: 75. Born 1950 or earlier: already in the table. Then three columns: traditional IRA / SEP / SIMPLE, former-employer 401(k)/403(b), current-employer plan, Roth (IRA and designated Roth). Roth owner RMDs are $0 after SECURE 2.0 §325 / Notice 2024-02. Inherited accounts get their own row — they are not the owner table. If you cannot name the custodian for every row, you cannot run the rest of this file.
2. Pull every December 31 statement before you trust the January letter. The input is last year’s closing balance, not this year’s statement, not a mid-year screen. Form 5498 arrives late; the December 31 brokerage PDF is enough. Add IRAs together. Keep each 401(k) separate. Type the IRA/old-plan total and the current-plan total into the calculator. Age 73 factor 26.5; age 75 factor 24.6 (26 CFR 1.401(a)(9)-9). $800,000 ÷ 26.5 = $30,188.68. If the custodian letter disagrees by more than rounding, the letter is wrong or you fed it the wrong year.
3. Decide April 1 vs two-in-one-year MAGI. Almost never delay. Year-one only may wait until April 1 of the following calendar year. Do that and you take this RMD and next year’s RMD in the same MAGI year. Worked: $800k on 12/31/2025 → $30,189 due by April 1, 2027; $850k on 12/31/2026 → $33,333 by December 31, 2027; one year of IRA income ≈ $63,522. That is how IRMAA and the 22% bracket arrive as a surprise. Take year one in the start year unless a documented MAGI reason exists — and run IRMAA MAGI first. Every later RMD is December 31. There is no April 1 for year two.
4. Still-working is a plan-document test, not a job-title test. Current employer’s 401(k)/403(b) only, plan must allow the delay, you must not own more than 5% of the company (IRC 416). IRAs do not wait. Old 401(k)s do not wait. SEP and SIMPLE do not wait. Print the SPD page and the ownership fact (W-2 / K-1 / cap table) into the file. If you own 6%, you are in the table on the current plan too. Rolling an old 401(k) into the current plan before the first RMD year can park that balance behind the exception; rolling the other way after the year starts does not erase this year’s 401(k) RMD.
5. Aggregate IRAs. Do not aggregate 401(k)s. Calculate each IRA, add the RMDs, take the total from the IRA you want to shrink (usually the one with the worst funds or the one you will QCD from). Each 401(k) RMD must come from that plan. Satisfying a 401(k) RMD from an IRA — or an IRA RMD from a 401(k) — is how people invent a 25% problem they thought they had “covered.”
6. Run IRMAA two years out on the taxable leftover. The RMD is ordinary income. It is MAGI. CMS looks back two years. A first RMD in 2026 is a 2028 IRMAA problem. Cross-link, do not rebuild: IRMAA primer and the MAGI tool. If the taxable leftover plus Social Security plus taxable interest crosses a cliff, the next two steps (QCD, then conversions in the gap years) are the levers. The withdrawal-order playbook is the 12% fill; this page is the floor the table imposes on that order.
7. QCD first, before a taxable IRA withdrawal. Age 70½+, IRA only, trustee-to-charity, 2026 exclusion $111,000 per person (Notice 2025-67). Not a donor-advised fund, not a private foundation, not a check payable to you. A QCD counts toward the IRA RMD and never hits MAGI. If you take the RMD to checking in June and donate in December, you already have the MAGI. One-time split-interest election is a smaller, separate cap ($55,000 in 2026) inside — not on top of — the annual limit. You cannot QCD from a 401(k). If the 401(k) is the only pot and you donate anyway, that is a Schedule A problem, not a QCD.
8. Inherited row: 10-year empty, and maybe annual RMDs inside it. Most non-spouse designated beneficiaries must empty by December 31 of year 10. If the original owner had already reached their required beginning date, annual RMDs may still apply in years 1–9 — confirm Pub. 590-B and the IRS transition notices for that year of death; do not skip year 10 either. Take the decedent’s year-of-death RMD if it was not taken, by December 31 of the death year, from the inherited account. Eligible designated beneficiaries (spouse, disabled, chronically ill, not more than 10 years younger, certain minors) have extra doors. Name the decedent’s RBD and the beneficiary class on the same page as step 1.
9. Spouse options are a tax election, not a courtesy title. A surviving spouse can treat the IRA as their own (then the owner table at their start age), remain a beneficiary, or — in some cases — elect to be treated as the employee for RBD purposes. Treating as own is how a 62-year-old widow postpones RMDs until 73/75. It is also how a 74-year-old widower who was not yet in RMDs can accidentally start them. Inherited Roth: still a 10-year clock for most non-spouse beneficiaries even though the owner had no RMD. Do not roll an inherited non-spouse IRA into your own IRA.
10. Gap years before the start age: convert, don’t wait for the table to choose the bracket. The decade after work and before 73/75 is when Roth conversions fill 12% or 22% on purpose. After RMDs start, the table is a floor under MAGI and conversion room shrinks. That sequence lives in tax-efficient withdrawals and the free conversion calculator — do not rebuild it here. This step is only the calendar: if you are 68–72 with a large traditional IRA and no RMD yet, the conversion years are now. QCDs at 70½ can start before RMDs; they do not replace the conversion math.
11. November, not December 30. Place the IRA RMD (or the QCD) in November. 401(k) in-service / RMD windows close. Mutual-fund settlement is not same-day. The penalty is 25% of the shortfall, 10% if you correct inside the IRS window (IRC 4974). File Form 5329; do not ignore a skipped year and hope. If a custodian already distributed more than the table, that is just a larger taxable withdrawal — you cannot put it back as an RMD overcorrection except in the limited 60-day rollover window, which you should not count on in December.
12. Hard-stop list: delaying year one to April 1 because “the IRS lets me,” skipping the IRA because you are still on payroll, QCD after the taxable RMD already posted, treating a Roth 401(k) as if it still had a lifetime RMD (it does not, after 2023) while forgetting the pre-tax side still does, rolling a 401(k) to an IRA in the same year you owed a 401(k) RMD and not taking it first, using Table III when a spouse more than 10 years younger is the sole beneficiary (Table II is smaller — get it right, don’t guess), and emptying an inherited IRA in year 10 while having skipped years 1–9 if annual RMDs applied. If the calculator’s taxable leftover plus Social Security crosses an IRMAA cliff, you wanted step 7 before step 11.

One-page decision

Birth year → start age. IRA RMD this year from the December 31 total, taken from one IRA or as a QCD up to $111,000. Current 401(k) only delays if the SPD and the 5% test say so. Inherited is a separate 10-year file. Year-one April 1 is a MAGI decision, default no. November. The table is a floor. The order of accounts is the other playbook.

Related: tax-efficient withdrawals · IRMAA planning · sequence of returns · Roth conversions