I've run into a snag on calculating RMDs for an IRA that was in a trust. Some of you may remember from the last time I asked some questions.
Married couple, wife dies at age 69 in 1999. She wasn't required to take RMDs until 2001 due to her Sep birthday. He's almost exactly 4 years older.
From the 1999 pub 590, he has to start RMDs over his life expectancy starting in 2001 (the later of the year the wife would have hit 70.5 and the year after she died).
He is 73 when she dies. His life expectancy is 13.9 at that point according to table 1 in the pub. RMD would be whatever the account was valued at on 12/31/2000 (since RMDs start 2001) divided by 13.9. MDIB doesn't apply since the wife is dead.
Ok, here is the problem I have. The pub says
Life expectancy for subsequent year distributions.
Unless you choose to refigure your (or your spouse's)
life expectancy each year (as discussed next), it must
be reduced by one for each year that has passed since
the date the life expectancy was initially determined.
Use of this rule is said to result in distributions under
the term certain method.
So you subtract 1 each year from the life expectancy unless they made a refiguring election, which was required back with the first RMD. He's still alive, so this account should have been empty back in 2014 since 13.9-13=.9. The IRA still exists. Hasn't been penalized for low RMDs so far as I know.
What am I missing? Should I assume the refiguring election was made? Who even makes it, the IRA? If I refigure then I think I use this same 1999 table each time, and he's 96 in 2022 so it would be 3.4. If I use the current table, it's 3.7.
But last year the IRA didn't distribute enough to match these calculations either! I'm beginning to think that this question is simply outside my area of competence.
EDIT: Talked to a broker my boss knows, and he said that I seem to be doing this right. So I guess the previous broker treated the guy as an account owner instead of an inherited beneficiary. Which seems wrong but there isn't any way for the IRS to know that. His firm had also started refusing to calculate RMDs on an inherited IRA.