A traditional retirement account comes with a deadline its owner never gets to set. Once the account holder reaches a certain age, the government requires money to start leaving the account every year, taxable on the way out, whether or not the retiree actually needs the cash. A Roth IRA carries no such requirement while its owner is alive, and that single difference can reshape how decades of savings are spent, taxed, and eventually handed down.
The withdrawal clock built into traditional accounts
Traditional IRAs and most workplace plans, including 401(k) and 403(b) accounts, are tax-deferred: contributions and investment growth go untaxed until the money is withdrawn. To guarantee the government eventually collects, the IRS imposes required minimum distributions, which force account owners to start pulling out a set amount each year beginning at age 73, a starting age scheduled to rise to 75 in 2033. The mandatory figure is recalculated annually from the year-end balance and the owner’s life expectancy, so it climbs as the retiree ages. Skipping a required withdrawal is expensive: the shortfall carries an excise tax of 25 percent, cut to 10 percent if the mistake is corrected promptly. For a retiree already covered by a pension or other steady income, those forced distributions can stack taxable dollars on top of money that is not even needed for living expenses.
The very first required withdrawal carries its own trap. An owner is allowed to delay only that initial distribution until April 1 of the year after turning 73, but doing so forces two taxable withdrawals into the same calendar year, often pushing income into a higher bracket. One softening option exists for the charitably inclined: a qualified charitable distribution lets an owner send money directly from a traditional IRA to a qualified charity, up to a set annual amount that the IRS adjusts for inflation, and have it count toward the required distribution without adding to taxable income. A Roth owner never needs that workaround, because nothing is being forced out in the first place.
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Why a Roth IRA stays off that schedule
A Roth IRA is funded with dollars that were already taxed, so there is no deferred tax bill waiting to be settled. Because of that, the Roth IRA rules set no required minimum distributions during the original owner’s lifetime. The balance can sit untouched for as long as the owner lives and keep compounding without a single mandated withdrawal. Congress recently extended the same treatment to workplace Roth savings: starting in 2024, designated Roth balances inside 401(k) and 403(b) plans also stopped triggering lifetime distributions, erasing a quirk that had once pushed Roth 401(k) holders to either withdraw or roll the money into a Roth IRA to sidestep the rule. The practical effect is that a Roth owner decides when, or whether, to take anything out.
What changes once heirs take over
The reprieve belongs to the owner, not to everyone who inherits. When a Roth IRA passes to a beneficiary, distribution requirements return. Under current law, most non-spouse heirs must drain an inherited Roth within ten years of the owner’s death, a timeline detailed in the IRS rules on distributions from inherited IRAs. The saving grace is that qualified withdrawals from an inherited Roth are generally tax-free, so heirs face a deadline but usually not a tax hit. A surviving spouse has more room still, frequently able to treat the account as their own and reset the no-withdrawal clock entirely, keeping the money sheltered for another lifetime. Because a Roth carries no lifetime required distributions, an inherited Roth under the ten-year rule generally imposes no mandatory annual withdrawal either; the heir simply has to empty the account by the end of the tenth year, which leaves a full decade of continued tax-free growth before the deadline forces it closed.
The planning value of leaving it alone
Freedom from forced withdrawals gives retirees something a traditional account cannot: control over the timing of taxable income. That control reaches well past the account itself. Larger required distributions from a traditional IRA can push more of a retiree’s Social Security benefit into the taxable range and can lift total income over the thresholds that raise Medicare Part B and Part D premiums. Dollars left inside a Roth never add to that annual total. The same feature makes a Roth a natural place to hold an inheritance, since a balance that never has to be touched can compound for years and reach heirs largely intact. It also explains why some retirees deliberately move money from a traditional account into a Roth during lower-income years, accepting a tax bill now in exchange for savings that will never carry a mandatory withdrawal.
The five-year clock a Roth owner still tracks
Escaping mandatory withdrawals does not make a Roth free of every rule. To pull earnings out completely tax-free, the owner generally must be at least 59½ and have held a Roth IRA for at least five years, the account’s so-called five-year clock. Contributions can always come back out tax- and penalty-free, because they were taxed on the way in, but the investment growth is what the waiting period protects. For someone who opened a first Roth late in life, that timing can matter, and it is a separate question from the absence of required distributions rather than a contradiction of it. The distinctive feature still holds regardless: the owner, not the calendar, decides when the money moves, and it can just as easily never move during their lifetime and pass instead to heirs.
The dividing line comes down to the calendar. A traditional account owner faces a first mandatory withdrawal at 73 and a penalty as steep as 25 percent for missing it, while a Roth IRA owner faces neither for as long as they live.
This article was produced with the assistance of artificial intelligence and reviewed by The Financial Wire editorial team.
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David M. Keller is a finance writer based in Columbus, Ohio, covering personal finance and consumer-focused economic topics. He earned his degree in journalism from Ohio University and began his career reporting on local business and economic trends for a regional media outlet. Since then, he has contributed to a variety of online publications, focusing on clear, practical coverage of topics such as cost of living, debt, and everyday financial decision-making.
