I bookmarked the RMD thread back in August for my mother and finally sat down with her paperwork. She's 81, widowed, a traditional IRA from my dad of about $210,000, a small pension, and Social Security. Her required withdrawal this year is around $10,500 and she spends almost none of it. What she does spend it on is giving. Her church, a hospice that looked after my dad, and a few hundred dollars to my brother whenever she feels like it (I'm not touching that one).
She writes checks from checking, a few thousand a year to the church and hospice combined. The woman at her bank mentioned a "QCD" and said she could do it straight from the IRA. Mom's reaction was "why would that be different, it's the same money." Honestly mine too.
Is it actually different? And is there a catch, because in my experience when a bank brings something up unprompted there usually is.
It is different, and I'm the cautionary tale from that RMD thread. I did my first one this spring after reading what Daniel and Linda wrote. Same two charities we've given to since the nineties, the custodian sent the checks straight to them, and it counted toward my RMD. My tax person says it took that amount out of our income entirely, which a check from checking never did because we take the standard deduction. No catch I've found except paperwork.
One small catch from experience. Get the letter from the church. Mine forgot to send one the first year and I spent a February chasing a lady named Joan for it. And the custodian's tax form shows it like a normal withdrawal, so whoever does your mother's taxes has to be told.
#4October 19, 2026, 10:15 am PattyRN said:
Mom's reaction was "why would that be different, it's the same money."
Patty, it's the same money to the church and different money to the IRS, which is the whole trick. Your mom's reaction was mine too until I worked through it.
A qualified charitable distribution is a gift the IRA custodian sends directly to an eligible charity once you're at least 70 and a half. The amount is left out of your taxable income altogether, and it counts toward the required minimum distribution. Writing a check from checking only helps if you itemize, and like Richard and most retirees, your mother probably doesn't. So today her $10,500 RMD is all taxable and the gifts save her nothing. If the church and hospice gifts went as QCDs instead, that part of the RMD would never show up as income. For her it may also mean less of her Social Security is taxable, since that depends on total income.
The catches are the ones Carolyn and Richard named, plus two more. The money has to go from the custodian to the charity, so a check made out to her that she then donates doesn't count. And the hospice needs to be a charity that can receive deductible gifts, which most are, but a donor advised fund or the like is a different story. Your brother is definitely not a qualified charity, so that part stays as it is.
I wrote up the full rules yesterday in qualified charitable distributions, including the 2026 limit (far above anything your mother is giving), how it's reported on her return, and why doing it early in the year matters. The RMD side is in required minimum distributions. Her tax preparer should see it before she sends anything, mainly to make sure it's entered properly in April.
"Same money to the church, different money to the IRS" is going on a sticky note for her fridge. Thank you.
Update. She's already taken most of this year's RMD, so only the last $2,000 or so of it can go out as a QCD this year, which is what Linda's point about timing meant. It's done, custodian sent it to the church last week and the church sent a very nice letter. From January she's switching both gifts over and doing them first thing.
She still thinks the whole thing is ridiculous. But she's doing it.
