I Don't Need the Money — Do I Still Have to Take My RMD?

Cardio Renal Foundation is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt charity organization. Your donation advances our mission to provide a solution beyond dialysis.

Every year, the envelope comes. Your IRA custodian says the IRS requires you to take money out — a required minimum distribution — and every year you look at it the same way: I don't need this money. I don't particularly want it. And taking it may cost me taxes I wouldn't otherwise pay. If that is where you are standing, this page was written for you. It answers the question underneath the frustration — do I still have to take it? — plainly and first, then walks through why an RMD you don't need can sting anyway, and the three things people in your position actually do with it. One of the three is the only option where the money never becomes your income at all — and it is also the one nobody mentions.

The Short Answer: Yes, You Still Have to Take It

Yes. The required minimum distribution is exactly what its name says — required. The IRS does not offer a "no thank you" on the grounds that you don't need the money, and you cannot leave this year's amount sitting in the IRA because your life is running fine without it. The withdrawal must happen, by December 31, and the penalty for taking too little — or skipping it — is steep. That part is not a choice, and this page won't pretend otherwise.

But here is the part that is a choice, and it is the whole subject of the rest of this page: the IRS controls whether the money comes out. It does not control where the money goes next, or how much tax it costs you on the way. Those two decisions are still entirely yours.

If the mechanics themselves are the homework in front of you — when RMDs begin (at age 73, or at age 75 if you were born in 1960 or later), how your amount is figured from the IRS table, and the deadline rules — we keep the full walk-through here: what is a required minimum distribution (RMD)? This page picks up where that one leaves off: the amount exists, it's coming out, and you don't want it. Now what?

One place to start is seeing your actual number. Our free RMD calculator figures this year's amount from your age and your balance, and shows you the tax on it both ways — if it comes to you, or if it goes straight to charity.

Why an RMD You Don't Need Can Still Cost You

The frustration is not imagined, and it has a specific shape. An RMD does not arrive by itself. It lands on top of everything else — on top of your Social Security, on top of a pension if you have one, on top of any other income for the year. Accountants call that stacking, and stacking is where the sting lives:

• It can push a slice of your income into the next tax bracket. Not all of your income — brackets work in slices — but the slice the RMD adds on top is taxed at the highest rate your income reaches, which is exactly the rate the RMD itself gets taxed at.
• It can make more of your Social Security taxable. How much of a Social Security check is taxed depends on your total income. Add an RMD you didn't want, and a larger share of the check can become taxable along with it.
• It can raise your Medicare premiums — two years from now. Medicare's income-related premium surcharges are figured from your income two years earlier. A bigger income year now can mean bigger Part B and Part D premiums later, on a delay that catches many people by surprise.

Every one of those says can, on purpose: whether any of them happens to you depends on your whole picture — your total income, your filing status, your state. But they are the real reasons "I don't need it" and "I don't want it taxed" so often arrive in the same sentence, and any honest page about an unwanted RMD has to name them.

Three Things People Do With an RMD They Don't Need

Once the money must come out, people in your position generally walk it through one of three doors. Two of them are perfectly respectable. The third is the one this Foundation exists to tell you about.

Door One: spend it. Nothing on this page should make spending your own money sound like a failure. Plenty of people quietly use the RMD to help a child with a house payment, a grandchild with tuition, or themselves with the trip they kept postponing. The tax is owed on it, the same as any year — and then it is simply yours, used. If that is your door, walk through it without a second thought.

Door Two: take it, pay the tax, and move it. The money comes to you as income, the tax is paid, and what remains goes into an ordinary savings or investment account in your name. It keeps working for you — it has simply changed pockets, from a tax-deferred account to a regular one, and the tax was the toll for the move. This is the door for money you don't need now but may well want later.

Door Three: give it straight from the IRA to a charity. This door has an official name — a qualified charitable distribution, or QCD — and it works differently from the other two in the one way that matters to you: the money travels directly from your IRA custodian to a qualified charity, and because it never becomes your income, no income tax is owed on it at all. It counts toward your required minimum distribution, dollar for dollar — the IRS is satisfied in full — but it adds nothing to the stack: no bracket push, no extra taxable Social Security, no Medicare-premium echo two years later. The short version of the rules: you must be 70½ or older when the money moves, it must go directly from the custodian to the charity (if it touches your hands first, it's Door One money), the limit is $111,000 per person for 2026, the same money can't also be claimed as a charitable deduction (it doesn't need one — it was never taxed), and it can't go to a donor-advised fund. If you have already decided this is your door, the step-by-step walk-through is here: how do I donate my required minimum distribution to charity?

One thing should be said plainly about Door Three, because most charities are too polite to say it: you would not be doing this Foundation a favor out of money you wanted. The IRS is forcing this money out of your IRA whether you need it or not, and in your hands it brings a tax bill, a squeeze on your bracket, and possibly higher Medicare premiums two years down the road. Giving it straight to charity is not a sacrifice — it is a relief, and the relief runs in your direction first. We are glad to take it off your hands.

Which Door Fits You?

Sorted honestly, it usually comes down to one question: is this money ever going to be spent by you?

• If yes — you enjoy it, or family needs it — Door One. It's yours. You earned the deferral; spend the money in good health.
• If maybe — not needed today, but life is long and roofs leak — Door Two. Pay the toll, keep the money in your name, keep every option open.
• If honestly no — the money would come out, be taxed, and then sit in a savings account untouched, year after year, while the same letter arrives again — look hard at Door Three. It is the only door where the amount does some good in the world and the IRS takes nothing out of it on the way. For money that was never going to be spent, it is frequently the cheapest exit the tax code offers — not in spite of the charity, but because of how the charity door is built.

Why This Foundation

If Door Three is the door you choose, the remaining question is which charity stands on the other side of it — and here is this Foundation's answer, in one paragraph. The Cardio Renal Foundation exists for the people living with kidney and heart disease, and its conviction is plain: dialysis should not be a life sentence. The gifts that arrive here keep a library of plain-words health articles and a shelf of free everyday tools — grocery lists, calendars, recipe boxes — free for the seniors who rely on them, and they carry forward the work of finding a way beyond dialysis. A QCD has one more virtue worth naming: because no tax is taken out of it on its way, the full amount you send is the amount that arrives — every dollar of it goes straight to work.

Stated Plainly

Stated plainly, because a money page owes you the same honesty as any other kind: this page explains how the rules work in general. It is not advice about your return. Your own picture — other income, a workplace plan, state taxes, a spouse's separate accounts — can change the details, and a qualified tax advisor who knows your situation is the right referee for your own numbers. And what can be checked, check: our legal name is Cardio Renal Foundation Inc, our EIN is 33-4359765, and we are a qualified 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization — verifiable in the IRS records by anyone, in about three minutes, and we would rather you checked than took our word.

You saved this money well for fifty years, one paycheck at a time. The RMD runs on the IRS's schedule, not yours — but the door it leaves by is still your decision. Questions reach a person here, at donations@cardiorenalfoundation.org or (646) 770-3946.

This article is informational only and is not tax, legal, or financial advice. Charitable giving and tax rules change and depend on your individual circumstances; consult a qualified tax advisor or attorney about your own situation.