2021 RMD for person who died in 2021
I have a client who has her normal RMD in 2021. Her husband passed away in December 2020, who was also RMD age. I know he didn’t have to take an RMD for last year. Ideally, everything would have been in his wife’s IRA by 12/31/2020. Then, she would have a larger IRA and a larger RMD. By the time we transferred his IRA over to hers, we were into January. Is it as simple as we take what his RMD would have been if he was alive and add it to his wife’s RMD?
Permalink Submitted by David Mertz on Tue, 2021-01-19 18:16
By transferring this IRA to her own IRA in 2021, she is is treated as if she were the owner in all fo 2021. Simply add the 2020 year-end balance in the inherited IRA to the 2020 year-end balance in her own IRA to determine her total RMD for 2021 as owner using the Uniform Lifetime table (Table III). In other words, her RMD for 2021 is the same as it would be if the transfer had been completed in 2020.