First, please accept my deepest sympathies on the recent passing of your spouse.
I presume when you said he had an account with Charles Schwab and that the account was transferred into an inheritance account in your name, that the funds were in your husband's IRA account, and those have subsequently been moved to your IRA account.
If that is correct, based on your age, you can take a distribution for any amount you wish. If all of your spouse's contributions to the IRA were pretax contributions, then the entire amount you withdraw will be considered taxable income to you, and reported on your tax return.
However, the decision to withdraw $75,000 may, in fact, cause an amount larger than $75,000 to be taxable to you on your tax return, assuming you (and/or your spouse) are collecting social security income. Depending on your income, social security benefits may be not taxable to you, but as your income rises, your social security benefits can start to become taxable to you, and with higher income, up to 85% of social security income can be considered taxable income.
As such, if you have historically been in a situation where none of your social security benefits were taxable, taking the $75,000 from the IRA could very well cause up to 85% of social security benefits to be taxable. It would be difficult to calculate exactly what the impact would be on your 2025 tax return, as the impact depends on how much social security benefits are received in 2025, what other income (retirement pensions, IRA's, investment income, etc.) you have, and the amount of deductions you have.
An additional factor you will want to consider is the timing of the withdrawal from the account - and whether it saves money to take the money out this year in 2025, wait until January 2026, or even take a portion out this year and a portion out next year. As your spouse passed away in 2025, you can still file your 2025 tax return as Married Filing Joint (MFJ), taking advantage of the higher MFJ standard deduction and MFJ tax brackets. The year of his passing would be the last year you can file a MFJ return (unless you remarry sometime down the road). So a consideration would be what does your income tax liability look like this year as a MFJ return reporting income received by both of your in 2025, versus what your income tax liability will look like in 2026, presumably filing status as Single, with just your income being reported.
I would recommend reaching out to your financial advisor at Charles Schwab, or reach out to a local tax professional to help calculate the impact of taking money out of the account this year, and if it could be tax advantageous to take the funds out in 2025, 2026, or spread between the two years.
I hope this information is helpful as you decide how to move forward, and again, my deepest condolences on your loss.
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