Retirement taxes feel confusing because the rules move. Several numbers that matter most for tax year 2026 are different from 2025, and a few of the reasons people were told to act in past years no longer exist at all. This page walks through the 2026 figures, names the IRS document behind each one, and points out where the internet is still publishing last year's numbers.
Every figure below is for tax year 2026 and was verified against IRS primary sources on July 26, 2026. Tax figures adjust annually, so check the source document before relying on any number here. This page is educational only and is not tax advice.
Why Retirement Taxes Feel More Complicated Than They Are
The federal rules that hit retirees are not individually hard. They feel tangled because one number feeds several separate systems at once, each with its own threshold. A withdrawal from a traditional IRA is ordinary income. That same dollar also counts toward how much of your Social Security is taxable, toward the income Medicare uses two years later to set premiums, and toward the taxable income that decides whether long-term capital gains land in the 0% band or the 15% band. One decision, four consequences, across two calendar years. That is why this is a planning problem rather than a filing problem.
What Is the QCD Limit for 2026?
For tax year 2026, the qualified charitable distribution (QCD) exclusion is limited to $111,000 per person, per IRS Notice 2025-67. A QCD is a distribution made directly by an IRA trustee to a qualifying charity. Because it is an exclusion rather than a deduction, the amount never enters adjusted gross income.
IRS Publication 590-B sets out the mechanics:
- The age is 70 and a half, not 73. SECURE 2.0 moved the RMD age but left the QCD age alone, so eligibility begins several years before required distributions do.
- The transfer has to go trustee-to-charity. Taking the money personally and writing a check to the same charity is not a QCD. It is a taxable distribution.
- A QCD counts toward the required minimum distribution. Publication 590-B states this directly.
- There is no double benefit. Per Publication 590-B, no charitable deduction can be claimed for an amount already excluded as a QCD.
- Each spouse has a separate limit on a joint return.
Why So Much Published Content Still Says $108,000 or $100,000
The QCD limit is indexed, so every article about it starts aging the moment it is published. The 2025 limit was $108,000. Before indexing began in 2024 it sat at a flat $100,000 for years, and a 2022 IRS tax tip still stating $100,000 remains live on IRS.gov today.
This one is checkable rather than something to take on faith. Notice 2025-67 reads that the aggregate QCD amount excludable from gross income "is increased from $108,000 to $111,000." The habit matters more than the single number: on tax content, source to the dated document (a Revenue Procedure, a Notice, or the current-year Publication), not to whichever page ranks first.
When Do RMDs Start, and What Is the Penalty for Missing One?
The required minimum distribution (RMD) applicable age is 73 under IRC section 401(a)(9)(C)(v), rising to 75 for individuals who reach age 74 after December 31, 2032. The first distribution is generally due by April 1 of the year after the applicable age is reached, and by December 31 in every year after that.
Missing one is expensive. Publication 590-B and the IRS RMD FAQs both put the excise tax at 25% of the amount not distributed, reduced to 10% if corrected inside the two-year correction window. Three ways people end up there, all procedural rather than careless:
- Workplace plans do not aggregate. Multiple IRAs can be totaled and the full amount taken from any one of them, but per the IRS RMD FAQs, distributions required from 401(k) and 457(b) plans "must be taken separately from each of those plan accounts." Someone with three old 401(k)s who takes the whole figure from one has underpaid two RMDs. The 401(k) rollover rules page covers how those accounts move.
- The April 1 grace period stacks two RMDs into one year. Delaying the first distribution into the next calendar year puts two required distributions in that year.
- An RMD cannot be converted to a Roth. Publication 590-A is explicit that amounts required to be distributed cannot be converted. The RMD comes out first; only what is left over is convertible.
What Is the New $6,000 Senior Deduction?
For tax years 2025 through 2028, IRC section 151(d)(5)(C) allows a deduction of $6,000 per qualified individual age 65 or older, or $12,000 for a married couple where both qualify. The IRS confirms on its senior deduction eligibility page that it is available whether or not the taxpayer itemizes.
Three conditions are easy to miss. It phases out at 6% of modified adjusted gross income above $75,000 for single filers and $150,000 for joint filers, which works out arithmetically to nothing left at $175,000 and $250,000. A Social Security number is required for each qualified individual, and a married taxpayer has to file jointly to claim it. The statute is also written to sunset: it applies only to taxable years beginning before January 1, 2029.
It sits on top of, not instead of, the regular standard deduction stack. Under Revenue Procedure 2025-32, the 2026 standard deduction is $32,200 for married filing jointly and $16,100 for single filers, plus $1,650 for each qualifying condition per person (age 65 or older, or blind), increased to $2,050 for a person who is also unmarried and not a surviving spouse. That add-on belongs to the standard deduction, so an itemizer forfeits it, which raises the bar an itemized total has to clear before itemizing wins.
Which Account Should You Draw From First?
This question does not have an official answer. The commonly repeated order, taxable accounts first, then tax-deferred, then Roth, is a practitioner convention. It is not an IRS rule, and no IRS publication states a correct sequence.
The structure is factual. Retirement money generally sits in three buckets: taxable brokerage accounts (basis returns tax free, gains taxed at capital gains rates), tax-deferred accounts such as a traditional IRA or 401(k) (ordinary income on withdrawal, forced distributions from 73), and Roth accounts (no lifetime RMD for the owner, qualified distributions tax free).
Order matters because only one bucket has a schedule you do not control, and because ordinary income from it feeds three separate threshold systems:
- Social Security taxation. IRS Publication 915 sets the base amounts at $25,000 for single filers and $32,000 for joint filers, with up to 85% of benefits taxable once one-half of benefits plus all other income exceeds $34,000 or $44,000. These are fixed statutory amounts, and the test counts tax-exempt interest, so municipal bonds do not sidestep it. Claiming timing interacts with all of it, as the Social Security claiming age page covers.
- Medicare premiums. The first income-related surcharge tier for 2026 begins above $109,000 of MAGI for single filers and $218,000 for joint filers, using income from the second calendar year before (42 U.S.C. section 1395r), so 2026 premiums are set from a 2024 return. It is a cliff, not a phase-in.
- The capital gains band. Per Revenue Procedure 2025-32, the 0% long-term capital gains rate applies up to $98,900 of taxable income for joint filers and $49,450 for single filers in 2026. Ordinary income fills that space from underneath, so a large IRA withdrawal can push gains that would have been taxed at 0% into the 15% band.
Draining taxable accounts first while leaving a large IRA untouched until 73 is the pattern that produces a permanent income spike at 73. Drawing the IRA down early has its own cost. No version is right for everyone, which is why this is a decision rather than a rule.
Are Roth Conversions Still a 2026 Deadline Story?
No, and this is where a lot of older content is now simply wrong. For years, retirement articles argued that conversions were urgent because the 2017 tax law's individual rates were set to expire after 2025 and revert upward in 2026. That expiration did not happen. The rate structure was made permanent by Public Law 119-21, so the "rates go up in 2026" reason to convert no longer exists.
The arithmetic did not change. A conversion is taxable in the year it happens, at ordinary rates, which makes it a question about which bracket the income lands in rather than a question about a deadline. For 2026, the 12% bracket ends at $50,400 of taxable income for single filers and $100,800 for joint filers; the 24% bracket ends at $201,775 and $403,550 (Revenue Procedure 2025-32). Describing where a bracket ends is a fact. Whether a specific household should fill one is not something a web page can answer.
Two mechanics matter before anyone gets near that decision. Conversions made after 2017 cannot be recharacterized, per Publications 590-A and 590-B, so any content claiming a conversion can be undone if the market drops has been out of date since 2018. And a separate five-year clock applies to each conversion for early distribution purposes, which matters most for people converting in their fifties.
Where a Financial Advisor and a CPA Each Fit
These are two different jobs and both are needed. A CPA or enrolled agent has unlimited practice rights before the IRS, prepares and signs the return, and represents the taxpayer in an examination. That work is about getting one year right, usually after the year has already ended.
A financial advisor works on the years ahead: projecting where taxable income lands each year from retirement through 73 and beyond, spotting the low-income gap years before they pass, and modeling how one decision moves Social Security taxation, Medicare premiums two years out, and the capital gains band at the same time. A retiree who only has a CPA usually gets excellent execution of decisions that were already made, in a year that is already over. Neither this page nor an advisor replaces personalized tax advice; the two roles coordinate.
Every figure above is federal. State tax sits on top of it, and it can move the answer more than a bracket does, because a state that levies no income tax collects the money somewhere else. Two of the most common retirement destinations show that trade plainly: retirement planning in Florida covers the estate and property tax picture behind the no-income-tax headline, and retirement planning in Texas covers what property tax does to the same trade there.
For the withdrawal math underneath the tax layer, the retirement savings calculator and the retirement income stress test are useful starting points, and sequence of returns risk explains why the order of events matters as much as the totals. If one stock makes up a large share of the portfolio, the concentrated stock position page covers the timing questions that come with unwinding it.
PlanVault connects you with a trusted, licensed financial advisor, at no cost to you. The calculator on this site is free and ungated, so there is nothing to trade for your contact details. The offer is a straight, no-obligation review of where your retirement plan stands.