He Checked the “Roth” Box on His 401(k) Enrollment Form at 45 and Never Thought About It Again. At 73, When Everyone He Knew Got Their First RMD Letter, His Never Came
Most Roth 401(k) owners spent decades following the same rules as everyone else, never realizing a single checkbox buried inside the tax code quietly exempted them from a retirement obligation that catches thousands of savers off guard every year.
This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.
If you checked the “Roth” box on your 401(k) enrollment form and kept feeding it for decades, here is the payoff almost nobody advertised: your designated Roth 401(k) no longer forces you to take a required minimum distribution during your lifetime. Not at 73, and not at 75. Not ever. That is the buried rule most participants still do not know about, and it quietly rewrote the RMD playbook for every Roth 401(k), Roth 403(b), and Roth 457(b) balance in the country.
What Actually Changed in 2024
Before 2024, the Roth 401(k) had a strange flaw. A Roth IRA never required you to touch it while you were alive. The Roth 401(k) did. That quirk forced retirees to either draw down a tax-free bucket they did not want to shrink, or roll the whole balance into a Roth IRA before their required beginning date just to dodge the distribution.
The workaround is now unnecessary, and since 2024, there has been no requirement to start taking money out of a Roth 401(k) after a certain age. If you turned 73 this year and every pre-tax saver you know just got their first RMD letter, yours never came because the plan has nothing it is legally required to distribute.
Statute Behind the Silence
The change comes from Section 325 of the SECURE 2.0 Act, which amended Internal Revenue Code §401(a)(9) to exclude designated Roth accounts inside employer plans from the pre-death RMD rules. The IRS confirmed the mechanics in Notice 2024-02. Effective date: taxable years beginning after December 31, 2023. That is the primary source: an actual statute in the tax code.
Who Gets the Free Pass, and Who Does Not
The exemption applies to designated Roth balances inside a 401(k), 403(b), or governmental 457(b). It covers your Roth contributions, any in-plan Roth conversions, and the earnings on both. It does not cover the pre-tax side of your 401(k), which still has RMDs starting at age 73 under SECURE 2.0 (and moving to 75 in 2033). It does not cover a SEP or SIMPLE IRA. And it does not apply to a beneficiary who inherits the account, they are still subject to distribution rules under the 10-year payout regime.
How to Actually Lock It In
Three concrete steps:
- Pull up your latest 401(k) statement and confirm the “designated Roth” subaccount balance is separate from the pre-tax balance. If your plan lumps them together on the summary, call the recordkeeper and ask for the Roth-only figure. Only the Roth portion is exempt from RMDs.
- If you are still contributing in 2026, know the limits: the standard elective deferral cap is $24,500, with an $8,000 catch-up at age 50 and up, for a total of $32,500. Workers aged 60 to 63 get a “super” catch-up of $11,250, bringing the total to $35,750. If you earned more than $150,000 in 2025, your catch-up must go into the Roth bucket, which is inconvenient at tax time but great for the no-RMD treatment later.
- Do not roll a Roth 401(k) into a Roth IRA out of habit anymore. Both are now RMD-free during your lifetime, but the 401(k) keeps stronger creditor protection under ERISA and cleaner five-year clock treatment if you kept it since day one.
Catch Nobody Mentions
Two traps. First, the exemption is only for the account owner. The moment your heirs inherit, the RMD clock restarts under the SECURE Act 10-year rule, and a non-spouse beneficiary will generally have to empty the Roth 401(k) within a decade. Second, if you already began Roth 401(k) RMDs in 2023 or earlier under the old regime, you were allowed to stop in 2024, but plans had a transition window, and some participants kept taking distributions by mistake.
Check your 2024 and 2025 1099-Rs. If your plan pushed a Roth RMD out to you after January 1, 2024, that was a distribution you did not owe. You cannot always put the money back, but you can stop the bleeding now. This is one of a handful of quiet IRS rules that quietly drain retirement accounts, and we mapped the rest of them in a free tax trap guide here.
One box on one form, nearly three decades ago. That is the whole trick.
Contact [email protected] for any questions or corrections.
David Beren has been a Flywheel Publishing contributor since 2022. Writing for 24/7 Wall St. since 2023, David loves to write about topics of all shapes and sizes. As a technology expert, David focuses heavily on consumer electronics brands, automobiles, and general technology. He has previously written for LifeWire, formerly About.com. As a part-time freelance writer, David’s “day job” has been working on and leading social media for multiple Fortune 100 brands. David loves the flexibility of this field and its ability to reach customers exactly where they like to spend their time. Additionally, David previously published his own blog, TmoNews.com, which reached 3 million readers in its first year. In addition to freelance and social media work, David loves to spend time with his family and children and relive the glory days of video game consoles by playing any retro game console he can get his hands on.
