If an IRA owner’s spouse is 10 years younger than he but is NOT the sole beneficiary of the IRA, which table is used to calculate his RMD? According to Pub 590, it states the spouse has to be the sole beneficiary to use the actual joint life expectancy table.
Looking for the Slott Report that addresses the issue of RMD’s when the spouse is more than 10 years younger
I don’t have it just now. But the central issue is that the IRA owner should use Table II in Pub 590 for RMDs instead of the Uniform Table III. Table III is constructed to assume the beneficiary is exactly 10 years younger, but Table II has a divisor for each combination of spousal ages. The younger the sole spousal beneficiary is, the higher the divisor and therefore the lower the RMD. Note that the spouse must be the sole beneficiary of the IRA to use Table II.
Permalink Submitted by Alan Spross on Wed, 2009-01-14 01:14
That would be Table III, the Uniform Table.
See p 104 of Pub 590.
The IRA owner may want to partition the IRA into one for the spouse and another for the other parties in order to reduce his RMD on the spousal portion.