The "Free Year" on Your First RMD: Take It in April and Two Distributions Land in One Tax Year

When you turn 73, your retirement accounts hand you a required minimum distribution — money the IRS makes you withdraw whether you need it or not. Most of us start RMDs the same way we take our first car out of the garage: when we get around to it. And that is exactly where the trap sits.

Here is the rule. For an IRA, the first RMD is legally due by April 1 of the yearafter the year you turn 73 — not by the December 31 deadline that governs every RMD after it. It feels like a gift: an extra few months of tax deferral on that first withdrawal. But the gift is only for the first distribution. The second RMD is still due December 31 of that same calendar year — nine months later. Take the first one in April and you now have two RMDs in one tax year, and both count as ordinary income on the same return.

That doubled income is what turns a calendar choice into a Medicare bill.

The cliff Medicare reads

Every dollar of an RMD is ordinary income, and it stacks right on top of your pension, Social Security, and that portfolio's dividends and interest. Medicare reads that combined number — modified adjusted gross income — through a surcharge called IRMAA, the Income-Related Monthly Adjustment Amount. It charges higher Part B and Part D premiums to higher-income retirees, and it does not look at this year's income. It looks at the tax return you filed two years earlier, so the 2026 return is what your 2028 premiums read.

IRMAA is a cliff, not a curve. Cross a threshold by even one dollar and you pay the higher premium for the entire year.

For 2026, the standard Part B premium is $202.90 a month. The first IRMAA tier starts at $109,000 of that modified adjusted gross income for a single filer, or $218,000 for a married couple filing jointly. Get over the line and Part B jumps to $284.10 a month and Part D adds $14.50 — roughly $1,148 extra a year for one person, and roughly double that for a couple where both are on Medicare.

What two RMDs in one year actually cost

Now the arithmetic that this is really about. Take a single retiree whose pension, Social Security, and dividends already run about $98,000 a year — under the cliff, and close enough to it that the margin matters. Her IRA is about $265,000, which makes her first RMD roughly $10,000 and her second roughly $10,500.

Take the first RMD in December rather than April, and her income comes out like this: about $108,000 in the turn-73 year and about $108,500 the next year. Both stay under the line. No IRMAA surcharge at all.

Delay that first RMD to April instead, and the same two withdrawals all land in one year: $98,000 plus $10,000 plus $10,500, for about $118,500 — more than $9,000 over the cliff. Same two distributions. Same total income over two years. The only difference is which tax year the second half landed in, and a full year of Medicare premiums gets billed at the higher rate, two years after the fact.

Why it is hard to undo

Once the April withdrawal is taken, the damage is mostly locked in. The second RMD cannot be shunted into the following year — December 31 is the deadline, and skipping it costs 25% of whatever you fail to withdraw. And the SSA-44 form, the appeal that lets Medicare look at more recent income, only applies to a short list of life-changing events: marriage, divorce, a loss of income. A self-chosen double withdrawal is not on that list. Expect the surcharge to stand for the full premium year.

What still works is shrinking the income that lands in the bunched year. If charitable giving is part of the plan, a qualified charitable distribution lets a retiree 70½ or older pay up to $111,000 in 2026 directly from the IRA to qualifying charities. It counts toward the RMD, but it never enters that modified adjusted gross income line — it is the rare fix that lowers the exact number Medicare reads, not just the tax bill.

And if the person has not made the mistake yet — anyone turning 73 this year, or next — the fix is free: take the first RMD by December 31 of the year you turn 73. The same dollars spread across two clean calendar years instead of one doubled one.

The portfolio takeaway

None of this is about whether you should spend the money. It is about which year the money counts as income. A dividend-paying portfolio hands you cash on its own schedule — you cannot retime those checks, and you cannot smooth them. The RMD is the one piece of the year's income you actually get to place. The retiree who lives off her income stream should treat that placement the same way she treats the portfolio itself: deliberately, aware of the cash it produces and the year it lands in.

The lesson is not "April is always wrong." If your baseline income sits nowhere near a threshold, the bunched year may cost you nothing extra. The skill is knowing your distance to the line before you click — because Medicare does not forgive a one-dollar overshoot, and it bills you a whole year at a time, two years after you thought the choice was behind you.