The law gives everyone born in 1959 two different RMD ages, and nobody has fixed it

Buried in a footnote of a Treasury regulation published on 19 July 2024 is a sentence the government has never repeated in anything a taxpayer reads. It says that section 401(a)(9)(C)(v) of the Internal Revenue Code "provides that the applicable age for those employees is both 73 and 75."

The employees in question are the ones born in 1959. The age in question is the one at which withdrawing money from a traditional retirement account stops being a choice.

How many people that is can be estimated but not counted exactly. The Census Bureau's Vintage 2025 estimates put the resident population at age 66 at 4,053,717 on 1 July 2025 and at age 65 at 4,155,651. Single-year-of-age counts are keyed to age on 1 July rather than to birth year, so the calendar 1959 cohort straddles both. The midpoint, about 4.1 million people, is the right order of magnitude and is not a precise figure.

Every retirement page in America publishes the same birth-year table: 73 if you were born from 1951 through 1959, 75 if you were born in 1960 or later. Google's own summary panel prints it. The table is almost certainly where the rule will end up. It is not, at present, the law, and the paragraph of the regulation that would make it the law is blank.

What is the RMD age right now?

For anyone born on or after 1 January 1951 and before 1 January 1959, the applicable age is 73. For anyone born on or after 1 January 1960, it is 75. Both are set out in Treasury Regulation 1.401(a)(9)-2(b)(2), which took effect on 17 September 2024. The single calendar year of 1959 falls between them and is reserved.

The regulation lists the cohorts in order. Paragraph (ii) covers employees born before 1 July 1949 and gives them 70 and a half. Paragraph (iii) covers those born between 1 July 1949 and the end of 1950 and gives them 72. Paragraph (iv) covers 1951 through 1958 and gives them 73. Paragraph (vi) covers those born on or after 1 January 1960 and gives them 75.

Paragraph (v) reads, in its entirety, "[Reserved]."

Why does the statute give people born in 1959 two ages?

Because section 107 of the SECURE 2.0 Act wrote the two tiers against different reference ages. The first is keyed to attaining 73 before 2033. The second is keyed to attaining 74 after 2032. A person born in 1959 satisfies both conditions, so both subclauses apply and each names a different answer.

The text is short enough to read whole. Clause (v)(I) applies "in the case of an individual who attains age 72 after December 31, 2022, and age 73 before January 1, 2033," and sets the applicable age at 73. Clause (v)(II) applies "in the case of an individual who attains age 74 after December 31, 2032," and sets it at 75.

Take somebody born in 1959. They turn 72 in 2031, which is after the end of 2022. They turn 73 in 2032, which is before the start of 2033. Subclause (I) fits, and the answer is 73. They also turn 74 in 2033, which is after the end of 2032. Subclause (II) fits, and the answer is 75.

Every neighbouring year is clean. Somebody born in 1958 turns 74 in 2032, which is not after the end of 2032, so only the first subclause reaches them. Somebody born in 1960 turns 73 in 2033, which is not before the start of 2033, so only the second does. The overlap is exactly one birth year wide, and it is the product of a single word: the second tier says 74 where the first says 73.

What has Treasury done about it?

It reserved the paragraph and proposed a fix on the same day. The final rule, TD 10001, left 1959 blank and pointed to a companion proposal, REG-103529-23, which would insert one sentence: "In the case of an employee born in 1959, the applicable age is age 73." That proposal has never been finalised.

The dates are the interesting part. Comments closed on 17 September 2024. A public hearing was scheduled for 25 September 2024, and no notice cancelling it was ever published. The proposal set its own applicability date at calendar years beginning on or after 1 January 2025, which arrived nineteen months ago and passed without a final rule behind it.

A search of the Federal Register for the regulation identifier the proposal carries, RIN 1545-BQ66, returns one document: the proposal itself. A search for anything the Internal Revenue Service has published since containing the phrase "applicable age" returns nothing at all. As of today the rule that resolves 1959 is a proposal that is two years and three weeks old.

Has Congress fixed the drafting error?

No. A bipartisan discussion draft correcting it was released on 6 December 2023 by the leaders of four committees in both chambers, and it has not been enacted. The text of section 401(a)(9)(C)(v) as published in the current United States Code, updated through Public Law 119-83 of 13 April 2026, is word for word the text Congress passed in December 2022.

The draft was not a minority proposal or a message bill. It went out under the names of the chairman and ranking member of House Ways and Means, the chairwoman and ranking member of House Education and the Workforce, the chairman and ranking member of Senate Finance, and the chairman and ranking member of Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions. The Senate released an identical measure the same day.

Its correction to section 107 runs to two instructions. Strike the words "age 72 after December 31, 2022, and" from the first subclause. Strike "age 74" from the second subclause and insert "age 73." The result reads as one age tier ending with people who turn 73 before 2033 and another beginning with people who turn 73 after 2032, which puts the 1959 cohort at 73 and matches what Treasury has proposed.

Two independent branches of government have now written down the same answer. Neither has made it binding.

What does the IRS tell taxpayers?

Nothing about any of this. Publication 590-B for the 2025 filing season, dated 21 January 2026, states the rule as "Age 73 for tax years 2023 and later" and stops. The words 1959, 1960 and "applicable age" do not appear anywhere in its 71 pages, and neither does an applicable age of 75.

The same is true of the required minimum distribution FAQ on irs.gov, the page that ranks first on this search and that Google's summary panel lists among its sources for the 73 and 75 split. The FAQ gives 73 as the age throughout. Its only reference to age 75 concerns pre-1987 balances in section 403(b) plans, which is a different rule about a different thing.

So a summary panel presenting a two-tier table cites a government page that does not contain one, on the single question the government has explicitly declined to answer. The answer it gives is probably right. The citation underneath it is not doing the work it appears to be doing.

How much money does the ambiguity move?

Two years of deferral. On a $500,000 balance, an applicable age of 73 requires a first distribution of $18,867.92 in 2032, and an applicable age of 75 requires nothing until 2034. Carried to the end of age 85 on the schedule alone, with no investment return assumed, the two readings differ by $21,391 of remaining balance.

That arithmetic is worth stating carefully, because it is arithmetic and not a forecast. Start with $500,000 held at the end of the year before the first required distribution. Divide by the table figure each year, take that amount out, and repeat. Under an applicable age of 73 the account holds $262,034 at the end of age 85. Under 75 it holds $283,425. Real accounts earn returns and real people withdraw more than the minimum, so neither figure is a prediction of anything. The gap between them is the size of the question.

Against the pre-2020 rules the change is larger still. Somebody starting at 70 and a half on the table then in force would have $221,306 left at the same point, having been required to take out $278,694 rather than $237,966.

What did the 2022 table change do?

It cut the required amount by about 7 percent at every age that matters. The Uniform Lifetime Table in force since 2022, published as TD 9930 in November 2020, uses longer distribution periods than the table it replaced, and a longer period is a smaller withdrawal.

At 73 the divisor moved from 24.7 to 26.5, which takes the required share of the balance from 4.0486 percent to 3.7736 percent, a reduction of 6.79 percent. At 80 it moved from 18.7 to 20.2, a reduction of 7.43 percent. At 85, from 14.8 to 16.0, a reduction of 7.50 percent. The pattern holds from 72 through 90 and never leaves the band between 6.5 and 7.6 percent.

Decomposing the two changes is instructive. Of the $40,728 that separates the pre-2020 outcome from the current one at age 85 on a $500,000 balance, $27,094 comes from moving the start age from 70 and a half to 73, and $13,634 comes from the new table. The headline change was the age. The quieter change was the divisor, and it applies every year for the rest of the account holder's life rather than once.

Both tables are in the CSV attached to this piece, at every age from 70 to 120, with the reduction and the resulting figure on a $500,000 balance.

What happens to somebody who takes the wrong answer?

The shortfall carries an excise tax of 25 percent under section 4974(a), reduced to 10 percent if the missed amount is distributed and reported inside the statutory correction window. Section 4974(d) also lets the Secretary waive the tax entirely where the failure was due to reasonable error and reasonable steps are being taken to remedy it.

Section 302 of SECURE 2.0 cut that headline rate from 50 percent, effective for taxable years beginning after the law was enacted on 29 December 2022, and added the correction window, which runs until the earliest of a notice of deficiency, an assessment, or the last day of the second taxable year beginning after the year the tax was imposed.

The direction of the risk is one-sided here. A member of the 1959 cohort who follows the proposed rule and takes a distribution in 2032 has done nothing wrong under either reading, because nothing prevents taking more than the minimum. A member who waits until 2034 on the strength of the second subclause is exposed to the excise tax if the proposed rule is finalised as written, and would be relying on a reasonable-error waiver in a fact pattern where the government has published its own contrary position eight years earlier.

What else moved, and what did not

Three related mechanics are frequently confused with the age change and are worth separating.

The required beginning date is not the same as the applicable age. Section 401(a)(9)(C)(i) sets it at April 1 of the year following the later of the year the employee attains the applicable age or the year the employee retires. The retirement half of that test is switched off for 5-percent owners, and switched off entirely for individual retirement accounts by the cross-reference in clause (ii)(II) to sections 408(a)(6) and 408(b)(3). An IRA owner who is still working gets no delay at all.

Designated Roth accounts inside employer plans left the lifetime rules altogether. Section 325 of SECURE 2.0 disapplied section 401(a)(9)(A) to them for taxable years beginning after 31 December 2023, which brought 401(k) and 403(b) Roth balances into line with Roth individual retirement accounts.

And the first year is the one that catches people, because the April 1 grace period does not skip a distribution. It defers one. An account holder who uses it takes two distributions in the same calendar year, the deferred one by April 1 and the current one by 31 December, both taxable in that year.

The part that is genuinely unresolved

Almost everything above is settled law that happens to be poorly explained. The 1959 line is different. It is an open question that two branches of government have separately answered on paper and neither has closed, and the cohort it concerns reaches 73 in 2032, six years from now.

That is a long time in one sense and a short one in another. Plan documents and custodial agreements are being drafted now against a birth-year table that has a hole in it, and the industry has filled the hole with a proposed rule because there is nothing else to fill it with. The likeliest outcome is that the proposal is finalised, or the technical correction passes, and the table everyone already publishes becomes true retroactively enough that nobody notices the gap ever existed.

The second likeliest outcome is that nothing happens until 2032, and a few million people reach an age the law describes twice.

Questions

What is the RMD age for someone born in 1959? The statute assigns both 73 and 75, and the final regulation reserves the answer. A proposed regulation from July 2024 would set it at 73, and a bipartisan legislative draft from December 2023 would reach the same result. Neither is binding as of August 2026.

What is the RMD age for someone born in 1960 or later? 75, under section 401(a)(9)(C)(v)(II) and Treasury Regulation 1.401(a)(9)-2(b)(2)(vi). Somebody born in 1960 attains 75 in 2035, with a required beginning date of April 1, 2036.

When is the first required distribution due? By April 1 of the year following the year the applicable age is reached, and by 31 December in every year after that. Using the April 1 date means two distributions fall in the same calendar year and are taxed together.

How is the amount calculated? The prior 31 December account balance divided by the distribution period for the account holder's age in the current year, taken from the Uniform Lifetime Table in Treasury Regulation 1.401(a)(9)-9(c). At 73 the period is 26.5, so a $500,000 balance produces $18,867.92.

What is the penalty for missing one? An excise tax of 25 percent of the shortfall under section 4974(a), falling to 10 percent if the shortfall is distributed and reported within the correction window. Section 4974(d) permits a waiver where the failure was due to reasonable error.

Does the still-working exception apply to an IRA? No. Section 401(a)(9)(C)(ii)(II) removes the retirement-year test for the purposes of sections 408(a)(6) and 408(b)(3), which are the individual retirement account provisions. It also does not apply to a 5-percent owner of the business sponsoring the plan.