{"id":27328,"date":"2026-08-18T09:00:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T13:00:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/?p=27328"},"modified":"2026-08-19T08:35:45","modified_gmt":"2026-08-19T12:35:45","slug":"avoid-paying-tax-on-your-required-minimum-distributions-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/2026\/08\/18\/avoid-paying-tax-on-your-required-minimum-distributions-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Avoid Paying Tax on your Required Minimum Distributions"},"content":{"rendered":"

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By Steven Jon Kaplan<\/p>\n

Depending upon your date of birth, you will eventually be required to take distributions each year from all of your non-Roth retirement accounts. Your custodian or an online calculator can compute the amounts of these distributions. Many people think they have to take these distributions out of their retirement accounts and put the money in a regular account, and then pay federal, state, and local income tax on this amount. However, if you are at least 70\u00bd years old, then you can get a special tax deduction called a qualified charitable distribution or QCD.<\/p>\n

The maximum total you are allowed to deduct for this purpose keeps changing with inflation, but is more than 100 thousand dollars per calendar year so you probably will be able to avoid paying any taxes on your RMD. Here\u2019s how it works: based upon the value of your account as of December 31 of the previous year, let\u2019s say that your total required minimum distribution for the current calendar year is 2,000 dollars. You could take out this amount and pay all the taxes on it. An alternative idea is to write a check directly from your traditional IRA account to The VRG (in some cases your custodian may prefer to write the check for you and send it to The VRG; ask them to see which method they use). You can\u2019t first move the money into your personal checking account and then write a check to The VRG, since that disqualifies your QCD. Instead, the money must go directly from your traditional IRA account to The VRG. If you donate the full 2,000 dollars this way, then this amount counts towards your required minimum distribution and you will owe zero taxes on your RMD. If you can\u2019t afford or you prefer not to donate the entire amount of your required minimum distribution, then you will still reduce the amount of your taxable RMD by whatever total amount you decide to donate. My Dad was in this situation for many years and he knew that all charitable contributions should be made from a different checkbook than his regular one. Even if you have not yet reached the age where you must make required minimum distributions, you can save on your future taxes by making this kind of qualified charitable distribution from a traditional retirement account. As long as you are at least 70\u00bd years of age, any contribution directly from a traditional IRA account to The VRG will reduce the pool of money on which you or someone else must eventually pay taxes.<\/p>\n

This is not personal tax or legal advice, which you should obtain from your tax or legal advisor for your individual situation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Steven Jon Kaplan Depending upon your date of birth, you will eventually be required to take distributions each year from all of your non-Roth retirement accounts. Your custodian or an online calculator can compute the amounts of these distributions. Many people think they have to take these distributions out of their retirement accounts and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27328","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27328","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27328"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27328\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27330,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27328\/revisions\/27330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27328"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27328"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vrg.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27328"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}