Updated July 28, 2026. Quick answer: SECURE 2.0 eliminated lifetime RMDs from designated Roth accounts inside employer plans, aligning them with Roth IRAs. The old workaround — rolling a Roth 401(k) to a Roth IRA purely to escape RMDs — is no longer necessary for that reason.
What used to happen
Roth IRAs never had lifetime RMDs. Roth 401(k)s did, which made no conceptual sense and forced people to roll to a Roth IRA solely to avoid distributions from an account that was already tax-free. SECURE 2.0 closed that gap.
Reasons to roll anyway
- Investment choice and cost.
- Consolidation and simpler administration.
- Starting the Roth IRA five-year clock, which is a separate clock from the plan’s — see the two five-year rules.
Reasons NOT to roll: employer plans often carry stronger federal creditor protection, and if you are relying on the rule of 55 for early access, moving the money to an IRA destroys it permanently.
Traditional balances are unaffected
The change applies to the designated Roth portion. Traditional balances in the same plan still require distributions, and those do not aggregate with your IRAs.
Sources
IRC §401(a)(9) (required minimum distributions); IRC §408(d)(8) (qualified charitable distributions); IRC §4974 (excise tax on shortfalls, as amended by SECURE 2.0); SECURE Act (2019) and SECURE 2.0 (2022); final RMD regulations published 19 July 2024. Cross-checked July 2026 against professional analyses. Indexed dollar limits and correction windows are described rather than asserted.
This states what the cited authority says. It is not tax advice.