How a qualified charitable distribution works
Most charitable tax benefits are deductions: money comes to you, you give it away, and you subtract it later if the rules allow. A QCD works earlier in the chain. Your IRA custodian sends the money directly to the charity, and the distribution is excluded from your gross income entirely. It is not a deduction. Nothing to itemize, nothing to phase out, nothing to cap.
That distinction is the whole game. Because the money never lands in your income, it cannot raise your adjusted gross income, and everything in the tax code that keys off adjusted gross income simply never sees it.
The 2026 numbers
- $111,000 per person, per year. Spouses each have their own limit from their own IRAs.
- $55,000 of that can go, once in your lifetime, to a split-interest vehicle such as a charitable gift annuity or charitable remainder trust.
- Both figures are for 2026 and come from IRS Notice 2025-67, the inflation adjustment guidance. They rise most years.
Why it beats writing a check
The 2026 law added new hurdles for ordinary charitable deductions: itemized gifts only count above half a percent of adjusted gross income, and top-bracket taxpayers get at most 35 cents of benefit per dollar given. A QCD walks past all of it, because those rules apply to deductions and a QCD is not a deduction.
New York is the quiet second win. New York starts its tax math from federal adjusted gross income. Money that never enters federal income never enters New York income either, so a QCD is excluded from New York State and New York City tax with no New York itemizing and no separate paperwork. For a city resident in the upper brackets, that stacks a real state and city saving on top of the federal one.
The rules that trip people
- IRA only. The money must come from an IRA. Workplace plans do not qualify: no 401(k), no 457, and no SEP or SIMPLE IRA either.
- Age 70½ exactly. Eligibility starts at age 70 and a half, not at 70 and not at your required-distribution age.
- Direct transfer. The custodian must send the money to the charity. If the money touches your account first, it is a withdrawal and a separate gift, and the ordinary deduction rules apply instead.
- Public charities only. Donor advised funds and 509(a)(3) supporting organizations are excluded. NYC Honor Foundation qualifies: it is a 501(c)(3) public charity, EIN 42-1836369, and its IRS classification, 509(a)(2), is not an excluded category.
- No double counting. Money excluded as a QCD cannot also be claimed as a charitable deduction.
One question this page deliberately leaves open: how a QCD interacts with a required minimum distribution you are already obligated to take. That answer depends on timing and on your own accounts, and it is exactly the question to put to a tax professional before you move money.
Where the numbers come from
The mechanics come from Internal Revenue Code section 408(d)(8): the exclusion from gross income, the IRA-only rule, the age threshold, the direct transfer requirement, and the exclusion of donor advised funds and supporting organizations. The $111,000 and $55,000 figures for 2026 come from IRS Notice 2025-67. The 2025 tax law made no change to section 408(d)(8); we checked the enrolled text rather than assuming. The IRS has not yet published its 2026 publications for IRA distributions, so this page cites the statute and the notice directly.
This is education, not advice
NYC Honor Foundation is a charity, not a tax or investment advisory firm. Tax outcomes depend on facts this page never sees. Talk to your own tax professional before acting on any of it.
To see the comparison on your own numbers, the charitable deduction calculator includes a side-by-side of giving from an IRA versus writing a check, free. If you take the standard deduction and give smaller amounts, the new $1,000 and $2,000 rule is the page to read instead.
The 2026 Giving Checklist
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