For tax year 2026 an IRA owner aged 70 and a half or older can have up to 111,000 dollars sent straight from the account to a charity and have none of it counted as income. The ceiling sat at 100,000 for years, then Congress indexed it: 105,000 in 2024, 108,000 in 2025, 111,000 now. It is a limit per person rather than per return, so a married couple who both qualify have twice that between them.
The reason this matters more than it used to has nothing to do with generosity. The 2026 standard deduction is 16,100 dollars for a single filer and 32,200 for a couple, with another 1,650 for each person aged 65 or over. A separate deduction of 6,000 dollars per qualifying person aged 65 and up applies for 2025 through 2028. Add those together and almost no retired household itemizes, and a charitable deduction is worth nothing to someone who does not.
What Qualifies and What Does Not
The rules are narrow and worth reading literally. The money must be sent directly by the IRA trustee to the charity; a check written to yourself and forwarded does not qualify. The recipient has to be a public charity, and two categories are excluded by name in the statute: supporting organizations and donor-advised funds. A fund at a community foundation that the donor advises is therefore the one popular vehicle this cannot be used for.
On the account side, the distribution has to come from an individual retirement account, and ongoing SEP and SIMPLE IRAs are excluded by statute. An employer plan such as a 401(k) is not an individual retirement account, so a worker who wants to do this generally has to roll the balance into an IRA first.
There is also a trap for people still working past 70 and a half and still deducting IRA contributions. The amount that can be excluded is reduced by the deductible contributions made at or after that age, to the extent they have not already reduced an earlier year's exclusion. Congress removed the old age cap on deductible contributions and did not want the same dollar used twice.
The Mechanics of an Exclusion Rather Than a Deduction
Here is the structural point. The statute does not grant a deduction. It says the amount is not includible in gross income, and a separate paragraph denies any charitable deduction for the same money. That distinction decides who benefits.
A deduction reduces taxable income only for a household that itemizes. An exclusion reduces adjusted gross income for everyone, and that number drives a long list of other calculations. The share of a Social Security benefit that becomes taxable is set by thresholds of 25,000 and 32,000 dollars that have never been indexed. A distribution that never enters income never enters any of those tests.
The practical comparison is between two routes to the same gift. Take the distribution, pay tax on it, donate the cash and claim nothing because you take the standard deduction. Or have the trustee send it and exclude it. The second route also counts toward the required minimum distribution, which is the feature most people are actually looking for.
The Two Ages That Are Not the Same
A persistent confusion is worth clearing. The qualifying age here is 70 and a half, and it was not changed when Congress raised the age for required distributions. That age is now 73 for people born between 1951 and 1958, and 75 for people born on or after January 1, 1960. People born in 1959 sit in a genuine drafting error: the statute says their applicable age is both 73 and 75, the final regulations left that paragraph reserved, and a separate proposed rule was issued to resolve it.
The gap is two and a half to four and a half years in which this is available and no distribution is yet required.
What Changed on the Form
The reporting changed quietly and recently. Through the 2023 instructions, the taxpayer reported the full distribution on line 4a, entered zero on line 4b and wrote the letters QCD next to it. The current instructions replace that with a checkbox: box 2 on line 4c. The one-time election to fund a charitable gift annuity, capped at 55,000 dollars for 2026, uses box 3 with the notation SIE and an attached statement.
Anyone following advice written three years ago is writing a notation the form no longer asks for, on a return that reports the most useful tax move available to a retired household that does not itemize. Two practical points close it. The acknowledgment letter from the charity still has to be obtained, on the same terms a deduction would require, and generally before the return is filed. And the trustee has to make the payment, which means asking the custodian well before the end of December rather than in the last week of it.
— John Stone