Do I have to take annual withdrawals from an inherited IRA?
Sometimes — and it is a genuinely conditional answer rather than a hedge. The single fact that decides it most often is whether the original owner had already reached the required beginning date when they died.
Where the owner had reached it, a designated beneficiary subject to the ten-year rule generally must continue annual distributions during that period, in addition to emptying the account by the deadline. Where the owner died before it, no annual amount is required inside the period.
An eligible designated beneficiary using life-expectancy treatment is on an annual schedule by definition. An inherited Roth IRA generally has no annual requirement inside a ten-year period, because a Roth owner is treated as dying before the required beginning date — but the deadline still applies.
Classification comes before every deadline
Beneficiary rules are not one rule. Which framework applies depends on what kind of beneficiary was named, what kind of account it is, when the owner died, and whether the owner had already reached the required beginning date.
Any explanation that starts with a deadline has skipped the step that determines whether the deadline applies at all. An estate or other non-individual beneficiary, for example, is generally not on the ten-year rule at all.
A deadline and an annual requirement are two different obligations
The ten-year rule sets a date by which the account must be empty. Whether something must also come out in the years before that date is a separate question with a separate answer.
Under the final regulations, that second question turns largely on whether the owner had reached the required beginning date at death.
What a general answer cannot tell you
A general explanation can name the variables and show how they interact. It cannot establish your beneficiary classification, confirm which regime applies to your account, calculate an amount, or tell you when to withdraw.
Those determinations rest on the account documents, the beneficiary designation in force at death and your own tax picture, and they belong with the custodian, a tax professional and, where a trust or an estate is involved, an attorney. Nothing here is individualized tax, legal, investment or estate advice.
Reviewed by Bay Area Wealth Advisors. Last reviewed 2026-09-18. Educational information only — not individualized financial, tax or legal advice.