Is the RMD age 73 or 75?
Neither, on its own. SECURE 2.0 §107 replaced a single RMD age with a ladder keyed to date of birth.
| Date of birth | Applicable age | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Before 1 July 1949 | 70½ | Reached 70½ before 2020, so the pre-SECURE rule was locked in |
| 1 July 1949 – 31 Dec 1950 | 72 | SECURE Act 1.0 |
| 1951 – 1959 | 73 | SECURE 2.0 |
| 1960 or later | 75 | SECURE 2.0 |
The 1949 boundary is mid-year
This is the detail most systems get wrong. The cut is not 1 January 1949 but 1 July 1949, because the original test was whether someone reached age 70½ before 1 January 2020.
Someone born in March 1949 turned 70½ in September 2019 — before the deadline — so they kept the old rule and their first distribution year was 2019. Someone born in September 1949 turned 70½ in March 2020, missed it, and moved to age 72. Two people born six months apart, on entirely different schedules.
Why 1959 needed a fix
SECURE 2.0 was drafted so that age 73 applied to anyone reaching 72 after 2022, and age 75 to anyone reaching 74 after 2032. Someone born in 1959 satisfies both conditions, which left their applicable age genuinely ambiguous in the statute.
The proposed regulations issued in July 2024 resolved it: a 1959 birth year uses age 73. Any tool still deriving the age arithmetically from the statute may return 75 for that cohort.
The age is not the deadline
Reaching the applicable age starts the clock, but the first payment is not due that year. The Required Beginning Date is 1 April of the year following the year the applicable age is reached — and deferring to that date puts two RMDs into a single tax year.
Check a real case. The calculator applies every rule on this page — SECURE 2.0 applicable ages, the before/after-RBD test, EDB classification and the 2024 final regulations.
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