You do not have to wait five years to withdraw your remaining regular Roth IRA contributions. For an ordinary owner withdrawal, that money comes out without federal income tax or the 10% early-distribution additional tax. The Roth IRA 5-year rule matters differently for converted money and earnings. First, find out which kind of money your withdrawal reaches.
Contributions, conversions and earnings at a glance
This table covers ordinary owner withdrawals that are not qualified. A qualified distribution is tax-free. For nonqualified withdrawals, the layers come out in the order shown.
| Money withdrawn | Five-year rule | Federal income tax | 10% additional tax |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Regular contributions | No five-year wait on remaining regular contribution basis. | None on that remaining basis. | None on that remaining basis. |
| 2. Converted principal | Separate five-tax-year recapture period for each conversion year. | Converted principal is not taxed again merely because you withdraw it. | Can apply to the portion taxable at conversion if withdrawn within its period, unless an exception applies. |
| 3. Earnings | Account period must be complete and a qualifying event must apply for a qualified distribution. | Nonqualified earnings are included in income. | Can apply to nonqualified earnings unless an exception applies. |
“Taxable conversion portion” means the amount included in income when converted. Within each conversion year, that portion comes out before the nontaxable portion. Source: IRS Publication 590-B, Chapter 2.
Contents
Identify the withdrawal layer
A qualified distribution is tax-free. It requires both the account’s five-tax-year period and a qualifying event, such as reaching age 59½. If the withdrawal is not qualified, the ordering rules determine which dollars it reaches. An old account alone does not establish that the entire withdrawal is tax-free.
For ordinary nonqualified withdrawals, IRS Publication 590-B, Chapter 2 puts the money in this order:
- Remaining regular contribution basis. Add the regular contributions still available across your Roth IRAs, after earlier withdrawals and applicable adjustments. Your lifetime deposits alone do not tell you how much is left.
- Conversion amounts, earliest tax year first. Within each year’s conversion amount, the taxable portion comes before the nontaxable portion. “Taxable” here means included in income when converted; withdrawing that principal does not make it new ordinary income again.
- Earnings. You reach investment growth after using up the earlier layers. Nonqualified earnings are subject to income tax and can also trigger additional tax if no exception applies.
Before using these layers, check your remaining balances against contribution records, conversion records, prior withdrawals and tax forms. The 2025 Form 8606 instructions and basis worksheets separate regular contribution basis from conversion amounts. The recordkeeping section explains what to collect.
These rules and examples cover ordinary owner withdrawals. Inherited accounts, corrective withdrawals, Roth SIMPLE transactions and certain rollovers need separate rules. See special transactions before treating those amounts as ordinary balances.
Roth IRA 5-year rule: two clocks to check
The earnings qualification clock starts on January 1 of your first Roth IRA contribution tax year, whether you began with a regular contribution or a conversion, if you are a calendar-year taxpayer. Opening another Roth IRA later does not restart it. An eligible, timely contribution designated for the prior tax year counts for that prior year. Once five tax years have passed, this part of the qualified-distribution test is met. You still need a qualifying event, such as reaching age 59½, for withdrawn earnings to be tax-free.
Each conversion year has its own conversion recapture period. For a calendar-year taxpayer, it begins on January 1 of that year and lasts five tax years. If your withdrawal reaches the portion taxed at conversion before its period ends, the 10% additional tax can apply unless an exception applies. You do not pay ordinary income tax on that converted principal again.
The IRS conversion-period example uses two transactions on February 25, 2025: a regular contribution assigned to tax year 2024 and a conversion made in 2025. Their dates on the calendar match, but their tax-year starts do not. If 2024 is the first Roth contribution tax year, the account period begins January 1, 2024; the conversion period begins January 1, 2025.
Starts January 1, 2024
Five-year condition complete: January 1, 2029
Starts January 1, 2025
Recapture period complete: January 1, 2030
The account period is only one condition for tax-free earnings. The conversion period concerns additional tax on converted principal.
The dates are tax-year boundaries, not five anniversaries of February 25. Nor does a new conversion reset the account’s earnings qualification clock. It adds a separate conversion period that matters only if the withdrawal ordering reaches that conversion.
At age 59½, the early-distribution additional tax stops applying. The five-tax-year requirement for qualified earnings still applies. If your account has not met it, withdrawn earnings can still be subject to income tax. Other qualifying events and additional-tax exceptions are covered below.
Trace a withdrawal across conversion years
Assumptions for the worked examples
The examples use calendar-year taxpayers and verified remaining balances across all their Roth IRAs. Prior withdrawals are $0. No later timely contributions, annual adjustments, special transactions or non-age exceptions change the results.
Suppose an owner born January 1, 1980, withdraws $18,000 on October 8, 2026. Their first Roth tax year was 2020, and they have $3,000 of earnings. The table lists their remaining balances across all Roth IRAs.
The account’s qualification period ended on January 1, 2025, but this owner is under age 59½ and the assumed facts provide no other qualifying event. The withdrawal therefore uses nonqualified ordering. The 2021 conversion period ended on January 1, 2026; the 2025 conversion period ends on January 1, 2030.
Where the $18,000 withdrawal goes
On a small screen, scroll this table sideways to see every column.
| Withdrawal layer/year | Remaining before allocation (USD) | Allocated (USD) | Clock relevance | Tax meaning |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Regular contributions | $2,000 | $2,000 | No five-year wait on this basis | Return of remaining contribution basis |
| 2021 conversion: taxable portion | $10,000 | $10,000 | Period ended January 1, 2026 | No conversion recapture base |
| 2021 conversion: nontaxable portion | $3,000 | $3,000 | After the same year’s taxable portion | No conversion recapture base |
| 2025 conversion: taxable portion | $8,000 | $3,000 | Period ends January 1, 2030 | $3,000 conversion recapture base |
| 2025 conversion: nontaxable portion | $2,000 | $0 | Not reached | No amount allocated |
| Earnings | $3,000 | $0 | Not reached | $0 earnings income-tax base |
The first $15,000 uses regular contributions and the entire remaining 2021 conversion. The last $3,000 reaches the taxable portion of the 2025 conversion, which is still inside its recapture period. With no applicable exception, the additional tax is $3,000 × 10% = $300. Earnings are not reached, so the earnings income-tax base is $0. The $3,000 of converted principal is not taxed again as ordinary income merely because it is withdrawn.
Where will your withdrawal come from?
See the contributions, conversion years and earnings your withdrawal reaches.
| Withdrawal layer | Used (USD) | Left (USD) |
|---|
The conversion rows follow tax-year order, with each year’s taxable portion first. For tax treatment, return to the two clocks and earnings and exceptions sections.
Now keep the same conversion balances, birth date, withdrawal date, first Roth tax year and $3,000 of earnings, but set remaining regular contributions to $0 and withdraw $26,000. The $23,000 of conversion layers is exhausted, so the last $3,000 comes from earnings. The recent conversion adds an $8,000 recapture base. Together with $3,000 of nonqualified earnings, that gives an $11,000 additional-tax base and $1,100 of additional tax at 10%. Separately, $3,000 is subject to ordinary income tax. That is the earnings income-tax base, not the tax bill; the bill depends on a tax rate that this example does not supply.
Save the balances left in each conversion year after a withdrawal. You will need them for the next one. A result of $0 additional tax does not always mean the earnings are tax-free, as the next example shows.
Why no additional tax can still mean taxable earnings
Now suppose an owner born January 1, 1966, withdraws $3,000 on October 8, 2026. Their first Roth tax year is 2024. They have $1,000 of remaining regular contributions, $3,000 of earnings and no conversions across their Roth IRAs.
The withdrawal uses the $1,000 of regular contribution basis first and then $2,000 of earnings. This owner is age 60, so the additional tax is $0. But the account’s qualification period does not finish until January 1, 2029. The earnings income-tax base is $2,000: age removes the additional tax without making those earnings part of a qualified distribution. The income tax on those earnings depends on your tax situation.
Disability, a distribution to a beneficiary or estate after the owner’s death, and qualified first-home use can also meet the qualifying-event requirement. Each has conditions, and qualified first-home use has a $10,000 lifetime ceiling. The account’s qualification period is still required. These categories do not establish a particular reader’s eligibility or an inherited account’s payout deadline.
The 2025 IRS Publication 590-B, Chapter 2 also lists exceptions to the additional tax, including qualified higher education expenses and qualifying unreimbursed medical expenses. An additional-tax exception does not by itself make a distribution qualified. Check the requirements for the exception you plan to use.
The ordinary-owner examples do not cover inherited distributions, corrective withdrawals of excess contributions, designated-Roth plan roll-ins or Roth SIMPLE distributions. Corrective excess contributions and their earnings are disregarded for ordinary ordering. Designated-Roth roll-ins need their own basis adjustments, described below. Do not enter these transactions as ordinary balances in this calculator.
Time in a Roth 401(k) does not count toward the Roth IRA qualification period. If you had an earlier Roth IRA contribution, that earlier start applies; if this rollover is your first Roth IRA contribution, the period starts on January 1 of the rollover year. See the IRS designated Roth account FAQs.
If you inherit a Roth IRA, the original owner’s five-year qualification period carries over rather than restarting. The deadline for emptying the account is a separate rule that depends on the beneficiary and applicable distribution rules. See IRS Publication 590-B.
Keep the records for your next withdrawal
To apply the Roth IRA 5-year rule, start with the contribution basis and conversion principal you still have available, after earlier withdrawals and adjustments. Prior Forms 8606, custodian statements, contribution records and distribution records establish what has already been recovered. Group the owner’s Roth IRAs and the year’s distributions rather than treating one account statement as the entire record. Contributions for the tax year can include timely contributions made after year-end; prior-year unrecovered basis, recharacterizations and applicable adjustments also affect the annual reconciliation.
The 2025 Form 8606 instructions, lines 22 and 24 and the associated basis worksheets, separate regular contribution basis from conversions and rollovers. For designated-Roth account roll-ins, investment in the contract increases the line 22 amount and is excluded from line 24. These line numbers are from the 2025 instructions.
Use the blank CSV to record the withdrawal amount, first Roth tax year, withdrawal date, age evidence and remaining aggregate contribution basis and earnings. Add one row per conversion tax year, keeping taxable and nontaxable portions separate. The allocation fields let you record how much of the withdrawal reaches each layer. Repeat the withdrawal ID on its conversion rows; account-level amounts are repeated context, not amounts to sum across rows. Use the notes to document reconciliation, annual adjustments and any exception that still needs checking.
Download the blank withdrawal record (CSV)
Leave an unknown amount blank and explain the missing record in the notes; a blank is not zero. This is a manually reconciled record, without formulas or a tax-clearance result. It does not reconstruct earlier withdrawals, determine exception eligibility or map your facts to final 2026 filing lines.
Why the record keeps each conversion year
“A separate 5-year period applies to each conversion and rollover.”
IRS Publication 590-B (2025), Chapter 2, “Distributions of conversion and certain rollover contributions within 5-year period.” This is the recapture rule; it does not replace the separate earnings qualification test. Source text checked October 9, 2026.
Download the worked calculations
Download the Python calculations and results behind the worked examples. These are hypothetical rule checks, not an investment-return backtest.
Download the exact hypothetical calculation code (Python)
Download all nine cases and three guard results (JSON)
The Python examples assume verified balances and handle age-based qualification and the age exception only. They do not reconstruct account history, evaluate other exceptions or calculate your income-tax bill. Exact month-end birthdays are outside the code’s scope. The browser calculator only allocates withdrawal layers.
For the separate question of adding new money, see Roth IRA contribution eligibility and limits. Funding a conversion raises different issues covered in backdoor Roth IRA rules and pro-rata treatment. For account choice before a contribution, see Roth versus Traditional IRA.
Sources and calculation notes
- IRS Publication 590-B, Chapter 2: Roth IRA withdrawal ordering, qualified distributions and conversion recapture periods.
- Form 8606 instructions: contribution basis, conversion records and distribution reporting.
The $18,000 example uses hypothetical, reconciled balances. The calculator follows withdrawal ordering; it does not calculate tax or decide whether an exception applies. Download the record sheet, calculation code and worked results.