Inherited IRA 10-Year Rule clock: 2026 annual RMD, shortfall and excise

It answers one question for an inherited IRA: is an annual required minimum distribution due in 2026 inside the 10-year window, and what does missing it cost? You enter the death year, your age in the year after death and the 2025-12-31 balance, and it returns the divisor, the RMD, the shortfall and the excise.

US non-spouse beneficiaries who inherited a traditional IRA in 2020 or later and are inside the 10-year window, plus the CPAs, enrolled agents and advisors who have to sign Form 5329 for them. It is built for the case where the original owner had already started taking distributions.

Most free calculators and most general chatbots still answer that the 10-year rule needs no annual distributions. That was true only under the 2021 to 2024 penalty waivers. The July 2024 final regulations require annual RMDs in years one through nine when the owner died on or after the required beginning date.

Every calculation is free and unlimited: the ten outputs are whether a 2026 RMD is due, the divisor, the RMD, the shortfall, the 25 percent excise, the 10 percent excise, the amount kept, the empty-by date, the days left and the correction deadline. The key adds CSV export and browser deadline alarms.

A US CPA hour for individual tax work runs about 150 to 400 dollars, and a missed-RMD cleanup is usually billed as its own engagement on top of the return. The excise itself is 25 percent of the shortfall, which on a 420000 dollar inherited balance is over 3000 dollars in one year.