IRS Pushes Back Deadlines in Proposed RMD Regs

"In short, when the IRS issued its final regulations earlier this year for Secure Act one, they also issued a small set of proposed regulations mostly dealing with Secure Act 2.0," Levine said.

"The proposed regulations had said that the final regulations, when issued, would be effective beginning January 1 of next year," he added. "Today’s announcement just says that when the final regulations are issued, they are expected to be effective beginning in 2026."

Proposed Regulation Details

The Secure Act and Secure 2.0 regulations that the IRS finalized in July talk extensively about treatment of inherited IRAs and other situations involving the death of a retirement saver.

The proposed regulations confirmed that, for taxpayers who are born in 1959, the applicable required beginning date is age 73, according to ALM Tax Facts Online.

Some of the other distribution-related topics addressed in the regulations proposed in July include:

• What happens when an employee uses some of the assets in a defined contribution plan account to buy an annuity.
• How the IRS treats distributions from Roth IRA accounts for RMD purposes. (The distributions from the Roth accounts would not count toward the Roth RMD total.)
• How the IRS determines the required beginning data for RMDs when distributions made after the death of an employee in a retirement plan go directly to a trust beneficiary.
• What happens to the spouse when an employee in a defined contribution retirement plan dies before distributions begin. (The spouse can choose to be treated as if the spouse were the employee for purposes of applying the "10-year rule," which usually requires a designated beneficiary to liquidate a retirement account within 10 years after inheriting it. The surviving spouse can also choose to take RMDs based on the spouse's own life expectancy.)

The proposed regulations do not discuss the 10-year rule in detail.

The new IRS announcement does not refer specifically to the 10-year rule and whether changes to the applicability dates in the proposed regulations could have any effect on inherited retirement accounts.

Bryan Keene, an attorney with Davis & Harman who serves as counsel to the Committee of Annuity Insurers, said he believes that some of the proposed RMD rule changes affected by the extended implementation timeline could apply to arrangements such as inherited IRAs.

"But I do not think that was the motivation for the extension," Keene said.

How to Move Forward

Jessica Weinberger, the lead author of IRS Announcement 2025-2, noted that the proposed regulations implement provisions in in Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement (Secure) 2.0 Act. She suggested that taxpayers read those.

"For periods before the applicability date of these amendments, taxpayers must apply a reasonable, good-faith interpretation of the statutory provisions underlying the amendments," Weinberger said.

— Janet Levaux contributed reporting.