Updated August 2, 2026. Quick answer: a 72(t) series lets you take IRA money before 59½ without the 10% additional tax — $800,000 at age 50 supports about $48,250 a year under the fixed amortization method, or $22,099 under the RMD method. The price is rigidity: you are committed for five years or until 59½, whichever is longer, and if you break the series the penalty is applied retroactively to every payment you ever took, with interest.
The calculator
Two methods here, three in the rules
Fixed amortization spreads the balance over your life expectancy at a permitted interest rate and produces a level annual payment. It gives the largest of the three in most cases, and it does not move once set.
Required minimum distribution divides the balance by your life expectancy factor each year. It produces less, and it recalculates annually — so the payment falls if the account falls. That variability is a drawback if you need a fixed income and a protection if you are worried about draining the account.
Fixed annuitization is the third permitted method and this page does not compute it. Its annuity factor comes from a mortality table published in the appendix to the governing notice, and we have not verified that table. Rather than approximate it and be quietly wrong on a number with a retroactive penalty attached, we have left it out and said so.
The life expectancy factors are the regulation’s
The factors come from the Single Life Table in the Treasury regulations, extracted directly and checked against the regulation’s own worked example — which cites 14.1 years at age 76, and that is what the table here returns. At age 50 the factor is 36.2; at 55, 31.6.
That check matters more than it sounds. A first attempt at extracting the table silently absorbed rows from the two neighbouring tables in the same regulation and returned 84.6 at age 76. It looked like a number. The anchor caught it. Any tool quoting you a 72(t) payment is only as good as its table, and most do not tell you where theirs came from.
The lock-in, and why it is the real decision
The series must continue for five years or until age 59½, whichever is later — and which of those two binds is the thing people most often get backwards. Start at 50 and five years would end at 55, which is earlier than 59½, so the age leg governs and you are committed for 9.5 years. Start at 58 and five years ends at 63, later than 59½, so the five-year leg governs and it runs to 63. Start at 54 and it is neither five years nor obvious: five years ends at 59, just short of 59½, so you are in for 5.5 years. The calculator states which leg binds for you.
Inside that window the payment is not yours to adjust. Take more, take less, roll the account, add to it — any of those can bust the series.
What breaking it actually costs
This is the part that deserves the alarm. The 10% additional tax is not applied to the year you broke the series. It is applied retroactively to every distribution in the series, plus interest running from each year. On the example above that is roughly $45,837 on $458,373 of distributions, arriving as one bill, years after the money was spent.
There is one relief valve worth knowing about, and one deliberate exit: a one-time switch to the RMD method is permitted, which is the standard response to a falling account. And what actually counts as busting a SEPP is worth reading before you start, not after.
Before you commit
Two things reduce the risk substantially. First, split the IRA first and run the series on a right-sized slice, so the rest of the money stays free and a later need does not force you to touch the series account. Second, check whether you need a SEPP at all: if you are leaving an employer at 55 or later, the rule of 55 does the same job with no lock-in — and the comparison is the first thing to read, because the rule of 55 is simply better where it applies.
The mechanics in full: the three methods, the duration rule and the rate you are allowed to use, which is capped and which you should take from the rule rather than from an assumption.
If a Roth conversion ladder would serve instead, the two are compared directly — the ladder is slower to start but carries none of this rigidity.
Life expectancy factors from the Single Life Table at 26 CFR 1.401(a)(9)-9(b), retrieved from eCFR and verified against the regulation’s own worked example. The permitted interest rate is capped by rule and is taken here as your input. General information, not tax advice — and this is one of the few areas where the cost of a mistake genuinely justifies paying someone to check the arithmetic before you start.