My wife recently turned 73 and has 3 separate IRAs. Does she have to take an RMD from each of them or can she take 1 RMD from one of them to cover the entire amount of all 3.
One will do fine.
I’d be careful about not taking the mandatory RMD from each account, especially if they had different administrators. It might work if you have all your RMDs in one place where an administrator can coordinate the withdrawals.
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I have more than one IRA, and calc the RMD’s for each one. But then I take the total RMD from the poorest performing acct.
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From the way this question is worded, I assume the 3 IRA accounts are not with one institution. To make this easier, I would recommend taking the 3 IRA accounts and rolling them over into 1 account at a single institution. I did this using Fidelity Investments. The process was extremely easy, and they handled everything. Fidelity also handles calculating the RMD and distributing the payments in the manner that I have chosen.
I agree. If you take one RMD for all three, the other two administrators may hound you for months about WHY you have not yet withdrew your RMD for that account, even though the IRS says you are good to go. Also, if you add the 3 accounts wrong by 1 cent,or round off incorrectly by 1 cent, you could be in tax trouble. If you insist on taking one, then you should add a few extra dollars to make sure you take out enough.
Experience here is I did not get any hounding, and was lucky to get some to specify how much it was.
I leave the difficult one (USAA life annuity) and use one that is easier to get along with Schwab. Have now emptied 2 or 3 of the others.
Now pay attention here old goats! If you don’t need some or all of that RMD this year, you can UN-TAX it! That is done with a Qualified Charitable Distribution. If you are giving to such charities, this is a much better way to do it. Just go learn the Rulez and follow them. You can give away up to 100k or so in a year!