The Roth IRA income limits for 2026 work like a sliding door: below one threshold you can contribute the full amount, above a second threshold you can’t contribute directly at all, and in the range between the two your allowed contribution shrinks on a formula. The base contribution cap is $7,500 if you’re under 50 and $8,600 if you’re 50 or older.1Internal Revenue Service. 401(k) Limit Increases to $24,500 for 2026, IRA Limit Increases to $7,500 Where you land depends on your modified adjusted gross income and how you file.
The 2026 Phase-Out Ranges
For 2026, the IRS set the following MAGI ranges:2Internal Revenue Service. 2026 Amounts Relating to Retirement Plans and IRAs
- Single or head of household: full contribution below $153,000, reduced contribution from $153,000 to $168,000, no direct contribution at $168,000 or above.
- Married filing jointly: full contribution below $242,000, reduced contribution from $242,000 to $252,000, no direct contribution at $252,000 or above.
- Married filing separately and lived with your spouse at any point during the year: reduced contribution from $0 to $10,000, no direct contribution at $10,000 or above. This range is fixed and not adjusted for inflation.
You also need earned income to contribute at all. Wages, salaries, tips, bonuses, and net self-employment earnings count. Rental income, dividends, interest, capital gains, pension payments, and Social Security benefits do not. Your total contribution can’t exceed your taxable compensation for the year, so if you earned $4,000, that $4,000 is your ceiling regardless of the general limits. There is no upper age cap on Roth IRA contributions.3Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Topics – IRA Contribution Limits
The $7,500 or $8,600 cap is a combined limit across all your traditional and Roth IRAs. Put $3,000 in a traditional IRA and you can add at most $4,500 to a Roth IRA that year.3Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Topics – IRA Contribution Limits
How to Find Your MAGI
Modified adjusted gross income starts with the adjusted gross income on your tax return and adds back certain items, including the student loan interest deduction, the foreign earned income exclusion, and some adoption benefits.4Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 408A – Roth IRAs For most W-2 employees without foreign income, MAGI equals AGI.
Calculating a Reduced Contribution
If your MAGI is inside a phase-out range, you don’t lose eligibility outright. The reduction follows a set formula:4Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 408A – Roth IRAs
- Subtract the bottom of your phase-out range from your MAGI.
- Divide that result by the width of the range: $15,000 for single filers, $10,000 for married filing jointly, $10,000 for married filing separately.
- Multiply the decimal by your base contribution limit ($7,500 or $8,600). That’s the reduction.
- Subtract the reduction from your base limit. Round up to the nearest $10. If the result is more than $0 but under $200, your limit is $200.5Internal Revenue Service. Publication 590-A, Contributions to Individual Retirement Arrangements
Worked Example
Take a single filer, age 52, with a 2026 MAGI of $160,000. The base limit is $8,600 (the age-50 catch-up applies). Subtract the $153,000 floor: $7,000. Divide by the $15,000 range width: about 0.4667. Multiply $8,600 by 0.4667: about $4,013. Subtract from $8,600: $4,587, which rounds up to $4,590. That’s the most this person can contribute to a Roth IRA for 2026.5Internal Revenue Service. Publication 590-A, Contributions to Individual Retirement Arrangements
Worksheet 2-2 in IRS Publication 590-A walks through the same calculation line by line if you want to verify your figures before making the deposit.
The Married-Filing-Separately Situation
If you’re married, file separately, and lived with your spouse at any point during the year, your phase-out range runs from $0 to $10,000.1Internal Revenue Service. 401(k) Limit Increases to $24,500 for 2026, IRA Limit Increases to $7,500 Most working people earn more than $10,000, so this filing status generally eliminates direct Roth contributions. If you and your spouse lived apart for the entire year, you’re treated as a single filer for this purpose and get the $153,000 to $168,000 range instead.
Spousal Contributions
A spouse without earned income can still contribute to a Roth IRA if the couple files jointly and the working spouse has enough taxable compensation to cover both contributions.3Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Topics – IRA Contribution Limits Each spouse gets a separate $7,500 or $8,600 limit, so a couple can contribute up to $15,000 combined, or $17,200 if both are 50 or older, provided joint taxable compensation supports it. The same joint phase-out range applies to both spouses. A joint MAGI of $250,000 puts both inside the reduced-contribution zone; the non-working spouse doesn’t get a more generous threshold.
If Your Income Is Above the Limit
When your MAGI exceeds the top of the phase-out range, direct Roth contributions aren’t allowed, but a two-step workaround is widely used. You make a nondeductible contribution to a traditional IRA, which has no income limit for contributions themselves, and then convert that balance to a Roth IRA. Roth conversions have no income cap. Because the contributed money was already taxed, the conversion of that amount is generally tax-free.
The catch is the pro-rata rule. If you hold pre-tax money in any traditional IRA, the IRS treats all your traditional IRA balances as one pool and taxes any conversion in proportion to how much of that pool is pre-tax versus after-tax. Someone with $94,000 of pre-tax traditional IRA money and $6,000 of new nondeductible contributions would find only 6% of any conversion tax-free, with 94% taxed as ordinary income.6eCFR. 26 CFR 1.408A-3 – Contributions to Roth IRAs
Report the nondeductible contribution on Form 8606 with your tax return, and keep the Form 1099-R your custodian issues for the conversion. Hold these records permanently, since the IRS may need to confirm your after-tax basis decades later at withdrawal.
When You Have to Contribute By
Contributions for the 2026 tax year can be made from January 1, 2026 through the April 2027 filing deadline. A tax filing extension does not extend the contribution deadline; money deposited after the April date counts toward the following tax year.
Two narrow exceptions apply. Service members in a designated combat zone get 180 days after leaving the zone, plus any days that remained before entering, to make contributions for the applicable year.7Internal Revenue Service. Miscellaneous Provisions – Combat Zone Service Taxpayers in federally declared disaster areas may get extensions through IRS announcements tied to those events.
When you fund the account between January and April, tell your custodian which tax year the contribution is for. Without that instruction, most custodians apply it to the current calendar year by default.
Fixing a Contribution That Exceeds Your Limit
If your income landed higher than expected and you contributed too much, you have until the tax filing deadline, including extensions, to withdraw the excess along with any earnings it generated.8Internal Revenue Service. IRA Year-End Reminders Note the difference from the contribution deadline itself: extensions don’t give you more time to put money in, but they do give you more time to take an excess out. The withdrawn earnings are taxable in the year the contribution was made, and a 10% early withdrawal penalty may apply if you’re under 59½.
Miss that deadline and a 6% excise tax applies to the excess amount for every year it remains in the account.9Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 4973 – Tax on Excess Contributions to Certain Tax-Favored Accounts You report the penalty on Form 5329.10Internal Revenue Service. Form 5329 – Additional Taxes on Qualified Plans and Other Tax-Favored Accounts The tax repeats each year until the excess is removed or a future year’s higher limit absorbs it.
A third option is recharacterization: direct your custodian to reclassify the Roth contribution as a traditional IRA contribution. The transfer must happen trustee-to-trustee by the tax filing deadline including extensions, and the net income attributable to the contribution moves with it.11eCFR. 26 CFR 1.408A-5 – Recharacterized Contributions Once complete, the IRS treats the money as if it had always been a traditional IRA contribution.