Traditional IRAs — What if You Inherit an IRA?: IRA Withdrawals (2025 IRS Guide)

This guide covers “Traditional IRAs — What if You Inherit an IRA?” within ira withdrawals. The following material presents the IRS treatment of this topic, including the qualifications, exceptions, and examples in the source section. Read the rules alongside the facts of your own situation before deciding what to report, deduct, or document.

Adapted from Publication 590-B (2025), Distributions from Individual Retirement Arrangements (IRAs), published by the Internal Revenue Service. This guide retains the source edition’s years, amounts, deadlines, and examples. It is guidance for that edition, not a statement that the same figures apply to every tax year.

Traditional IRAs — What if You Inherit an IRA?

If you inherit a traditional IRA, you are called a beneficiary. A beneficiary can be any person or entity the owner chooses to receive the benefits of the IRA after the owner dies. Beneficiaries of a traditional IRA must include in their gross income any taxable distributions they receive.

Tip:

IRAs inherited from decedents who died in 2019 or earlier are subject to different rules. See Retirement Topics - Beneficiary, for more information.

Inherited from spouse.

If you inherit a traditional IRA from your spouse, you generally have the following two choices.

1. Treat it as your own IRA by designating yourself as the account owner; or

2. Treat it as your own by rolling it over into your IRA, or to the extent it is taxable, into a:

   1. Qualified employer plan,

   2. Qualified employee annuity plan (section 403(a) plan),

   3. Tax-sheltered annuity plan (section 403(b) plan),

   4. Deferred compensation plan of a state or local government (section 457 plan), or

3. Treat yourself as the beneficiary rather than treating the IRA as your own.

Treating it as your own.

You will be considered to have chosen to treat the IRA as your own if:

• Contributions (including rollover contributions) are made to the inherited IRA, or

• You don't take the required minimum distribution for a year as a beneficiary of the IRA.

You will only be considered to have chosen to treat the IRA as your own if:

• You are the sole beneficiary of the IRA, and

• You have an unlimited right to withdraw amounts from it.

However, if you receive a distribution from your deceased spouse's IRA, you can roll that distribution over into your own IRA within the 60-day time limit, as long as the distribution isn't a required distribution, even if you aren't the sole beneficiary of your deceased spouse's IRA.

Inherited from someone other than spouse.

If you inherit a traditional IRA from anyone other than your deceased spouse, you can't treat the inherited IRA as your own. This means that you can't make any contributions to the IRA. It also means you can't roll over any amounts into or out of the inherited IRA. However, you can make a trustee-to-trustee transfer as long as the IRA into which amounts are being moved is set up and maintained in the name of the deceased IRA owner for the benefit of you as beneficiary.

Like the original owner, you generally won't owe tax on the assets in the IRA until you receive distributions from it. You must begin receiving distributions from the IRA under the rules for distributions that apply to beneficiaries.

IRA with basis.

If you inherit a traditional IRA from a person who had basis in the IRA because of nondeductible contributions, that basis remains with the IRA. Unless you are the decedent's spouse and choose to treat the IRA as your own, you can't combine this basis with any basis you have in your own traditional IRA(s) or any basis in traditional IRA(s) you inherited from other decedents. If you take distributions from both an inherited IRA and your IRA, and each has basis, you must complete separate Forms 8606 to determine the taxable and nontaxable portions of those distributions.

Federal estate tax deduction.

A beneficiary may be able to claim a deduction for estate tax resulting from certain distributions from a traditional IRA. The beneficiary can deduct the estate tax paid on any part of a distribution that is income with respect to a decedent. The beneficiary can take the deduction for the tax year the income is reported. For information on claiming this deduction, see Estate Tax Deduction under Other Tax Information in Pub. 559.

Any taxable part of a distribution that isn't income with respect to a decedent is a payment the beneficiary must include in income. However, the beneficiary can't take any deduction for estate tax.

A surviving spouse can roll over the distribution to another traditional IRA and avoid including it in income for the year received.

More information.

For more information about rollovers, required distributions, and inherited IRAs, see:

• Rollovers under Can You Move Retirement Plan Assets? in chapter 1 of Pub. 590-A;

• When Must You Withdraw Assets? (Required Minimum Distributions), later; and

• The discussion of IRA Beneficiaries, later, under When Must You Withdraw Assets? (Required Minimum Distributions).

Using the guidance

Keep the documents that establish the dates, amounts, and circumstances described above. References to other chapters, forms, worksheets, or earlier and later sections refer to the linked IRS publication. Check the full publication and its updates before relying on a rule for a different tax year or a situation not addressed here.

Sources and further reading

• Publication 590-B (2025), Distributions from Individual Retirement Arrangements (IRAs): Traditional IRAs — What if You Inherit an IRA? — Internal Revenue Service; 2025 edition.

The cited U.S. government text is in the public domain. Source accessed October 28, 2026. Fynoptic has organized this material for educational use and is independent of, and not endorsed by, the IRS.