Qualified Charitable Distributions: The RMD Workaround After 70½

Bogleheads has dozens of threads on qualified charitable distributions, with titles like "Mechanics of QCD" and "Sequence of taking RMD and QCD," and the questions in them are almost always about process rather than whether the strategy is worth it. People already know it's worth it. What trips them up is the ordering, the eligibility age, and which custodian form actually does what.

A QCD is one of the few tax moves that's genuinely better than the deduction most people assume is the alternative. Here's how it actually works, and where the two ages that matter (70½ and your RMD age) stop lining up.

What a QCD actually is

A qualified charitable distribution is a direct transfer of money from a traditional IRA to a qualified public charity, sent trustee-to-trustee, meaning the custodian pays the charity directly rather than paying you and trusting you to donate it yourself. Because the money never passes through your hands as taxable income, it's excluded from your adjusted gross income entirely, not just deducted from it.

That distinction matters more than it sounds. A normal charitable donation only helps your taxes if you itemize deductions, and since the standard deduction nearly doubled in 2018, the large majority of filers no longer itemize at all, which means a huge share of charitable giving today produces zero tax benefit under the standard deduction/itemizing framework. A QCD sidesteps that problem completely, because it reduces your income before AGI is even calculated, whether you itemize or not.

The two ages people conflate

This is where most of the confusion starts. There are two different age thresholds involved, and they haven't matched since SECURE 2.0 passed.

You can start making QCDs at age 70½. This age hasn't changed since the provision was made permanent in 2015, and it has nothing to do with when your required minimum distributions begin.

Your RMDs don't start until later. Under SECURE 2.0, the RMD age is 73 for anyone born between 1951 and 1959, and 75 for anyone born in 1960 or later (Congressional Research Service summary of SECURE 2.0's RMD provisions). That leaves a gap, sometimes several years, where you're eligible to make QCDs but don't yet have an RMD to offset.

That gap is useful, not a problem. If you're 71 and don't technically need to take any distribution yet, you can still direct money from your IRA to charity via QCD, excluding it from income, even though there's no RMD on the table that year to "satisfy." Waiting until your RMDs actually start to begin using QCDs isn't required and isn't necessarily optimal, especially if you're trying to manage your taxable income down in an earlier, lower-bracket year.

The 2026 limit

The maximum QCD amount is indexed for inflation under SECURE 2.0 and adjusts annually. For 2026, the limit is $111,000 per person, up from $108,000 in 2025, per IRS Notice 2025-67 (confirmed by both Fidelity and Kiplinger's coverage of the 2026 retirement rule changes). A married couple where both spouses are 70½ or older and both have their own IRAs can each use their own $111,000 limit, for a combined $222,000, as long as the money comes from each spouse's own account; one spouse can't use the other's limit.

There's also a narrower, one-time-use provision: in 2026, up to $55,000 of a QCD can go to certain "split-interest" entities, specifically a charitable remainder trust or charitable gift annuity, as a one-time election, up from $54,000 in 2025. This is a niche feature most people won't use, since it requires setting up one of those vehicles, but it exists within the same inflation-indexed framework as the main limit.

The sequencing rule that catches people

If you want a QCD to count toward satisfying your RMD for the year, it has to happen before you've taken the rest of your RMD, not after.

The IRS treats the first dollars distributed from your IRA each year as going toward your RMD first. If your RMD is $40,000 and you take a $40,000 regular distribution in March, then try to do a $20,000 QCD in October, the QCD still excludes that $20,000 from your taxable income (QCDs are tax-free regardless of timing), but it no longer reduces your RMD, because the RMD was already fully satisfied by the earlier distribution. Do the QCD first, before any other distributions that year, if the goal is to have it count toward the RMD itself.

A worked example. Say your RMD for the year is $40,000, and you want to give $15,000 to charity. Do the QCD first: $15,000 goes directly from your IRA to the charity, excluded from your income, and counts as $15,000 of your RMD. You then still owe the remaining $25,000 of your RMD, which you can take as a normal taxable distribution. Your reportable income from the IRA that year is $25,000, not $40,000, and you got the full benefit of the charitable gift without it touching your AGI at all. Compare that to giving the same $15,000 as cash after taking the full $40,000 RMD: your AGI includes the full $40,000, and the $15,000 donation only reduces your taxes if you itemize, which most retirees taking the standard deduction don't.

Why keeping AGI down matters beyond the deduction

A QCD's real advantage shows up in places a simple deduction never reaches, because it changes AGI itself rather than just offsetting it on Schedule A.

Social Security taxation. Up to 85% of Social Security benefits can become taxable once your combined income crosses certain thresholds. Those thresholds are based on a formula using your AGI, so a lower AGI from routing part of your RMD through a QCD can reduce how much of your Social Security benefit gets taxed in the first place.

Medicare premium surcharges (IRMAA). Medicare Part B and Part D premiums increase at higher income tiers, based on a two-year-lagged look at your tax return's AGI. Because a QCD keeps that income off your return entirely, it can keep you under an IRMAA threshold that a same-size cash donation, taken as a distribution and then donated, would not.

Neither of these effects shows up if you just compare "deduction vs. no deduction." They only show up when you think in terms of AGI itself, which is the actual lever a QCD pulls.

What a QCD can't do

A QCD has to go to a qualified public charity directly, which rules out two options people sometimes expect to work. It can't fund a donor-advised fund; DAFs are explicitly excluded from QCD-eligible recipients, since the money would sit in an account you still influence rather than reaching an operating charity. And it can't go to a private foundation. If you're deciding between the two strategies, a DAF is funded with cash or appreciated securities from a taxable account and works at any age, while a QCD is specifically IRA money and specifically for people 70½ or older; they solve overlapping but distinct problems, and plenty of people eventually use both.

A QCD also only comes from an IRA, not a 401(k) or 403(b) directly. If most of your retirement money is still in an employer plan, you'd need to roll at least a portion into an IRA first to make QCDs available on that money.

Getting it set up

Call your IRA custodian, not your personal bank account. Most major custodians (Fidelity, Vanguard, Schwab) have a specific QCD request form or online workflow, separate from a regular distribution request, and the custodian typically mails a check made out directly to the charity, either sent to the charity or to you to forward. Make sure the check clears and is cashed by the charity within the tax year; an uncashed check at year-end can complicate whether the QCD actually counted for that year's RMD.

Getting the mechanics right turns a routine RMD into a year where part of your mandatory withdrawal does something you wanted it to do anyway, without it ever touching your taxable income. Tracking your RMD-eligible balances alongside the rest of your retirement accounts makes it easier to plan the QCD amount before the year gets away from you, rather than scrambling to make a distribution count before December 31.

Frequently asked questions

Can I do a QCD if I'm 70½ but my RMDs haven't started yet?

Yes. The 70½ eligibility age for QCDs is separate from your RMD age, which is 73 or 75 depending on your birth year under SECURE 2.0. You can make a QCD at 70½ even with no RMD due yet; it simply reduces your IRA balance and your taxable income for that year without "satisfying" anything, since there's nothing to satisfy.

Does a QCD count as a charitable deduction on my tax return?

No, and that's the point. A QCD is excluded from income rather than deducted from it, so you don't itemize it and it doesn't show up as a Schedule A deduction. Claiming it as a deduction as well as excluding it from income would be double-counting the benefit, so your tax software or preparer needs to know the distribution was a QCD, not a regular one, to handle it correctly.

What's the difference between a QCD and just taking a distribution and donating the cash myself?

The money ends up with the same charity either way, but a regular distribution increases your AGI first, and the subsequent donation only reduces your taxes if you itemize. A QCD never touches your AGI at all, which means it benefits you even if you take the standard deduction, and it also helps keep you under thresholds tied to AGI, like Social Security taxation and Medicare IRMAA surcharges, that a standard deduction can't touch.

Is there a limit on how many charities I can split a QCD across?

No, the $111,000 (2026) annual limit is a total across however many qualified charities you choose to split it between. You can send $111,000 to one organization or divide it across ten, as long as each one is an eligible public charity and the total doesn't exceed your annual limit.