IRA Limit for Married Filing Jointly: Roth, Traditional, Spousal

For the 2026 tax year, IRA contribution limits for married couples filing jointly work per spouse rather than per household: each person can put up to $7,500 into their own IRA accounts, or $8,600 if they are 50 or older by year-end.¹² Two spouses under 50 can therefore contribute a combined $15,000; two spouses 50 or older, up to $17,200. Whether you can actually put in that much, and whether any of it is deductible, depends on your income and on who has a retirement plan at work.

The Per-Person Cap and What It Really Means

IRAs are individual accounts. There is no joint IRA. Each spouse’s $7,500 limit applies across every Traditional and Roth IRA that person owns, not per account.³ Splitting $7,500 between a Roth and a Traditional in your name is fine; contributing $7,500 to each is an excess.

The catch-up of $1,100 for those 50 and older is new territory. That amount sat at $1,000 for years and only began adjusting with inflation under the SECURE 2.0 Act starting in 2025.

One ceiling sits above the dollar limit: your combined contributions cannot exceed your taxable compensation for the year. A couple with $12,000 in combined earned income can contribute a total of $12,000, not $15,000.³ Compensation means wages, salary, tips, commissions, bonuses, and net self-employment earnings. Rental income, interest, dividends, pensions, and Social Security do not count.⁴

When One Spouse Has No Earned Income

A joint filer whose spouse has little or no earned income can still fund a full IRA for that spouse under the Kay Bailey Hutchison Spousal IRA rule.⁵ The working spouse’s compensation just has to be at least as much as both IRA contributions combined. A spouse earning $20,000 can fund $7,500 into their own IRA and $7,500 into an IRA in the non-working spouse’s name.

The spousal IRA can be Traditional or Roth. Every rule that follows below applies to it the same way.

Roth IRA Income Phase-Outs

Roth contributions are made with after-tax money, but the direct route closes off at higher incomes. What matters is your modified adjusted gross income, which for most W-2 households with no foreign income is very close to AGI.

For 2026, married filing jointly:¹

MAGI below $242,000: each spouse can contribute the full amount to a Roth.
MAGI between $242,000 and $252,000: allowable Roth contributions shrink proportionally.
MAGI of $252,000 or more: no direct Roth contributions.

These limits govern only direct contributions. Nothing here stops a high earner from making a nondeductible Traditional IRA contribution and converting it (see below).

Traditional IRA Deductibility

Anyone with earned income can contribute to a Traditional IRA at any income. The question is whether you can deduct it. The answer turns on whether either spouse is covered by a workplace retirement plan such as a 401(k), 403(b), or pension.

Neither Spouse Is Covered by a Workplace Plan

Contributions are fully deductible with no income limit.⁶

The Contributing Spouse Is Covered

The phase-out is tight. For 2026, married filing jointly:²

MAGI up to $129,000: full deduction.
MAGI $129,000 to $149,000: partial deduction.
MAGI $149,000 or more: no deduction.

If you lose the deduction, you can still contribute on a nondeductible basis. Report the nondeductible amount on Form 8606 so you don’t get taxed on that money again in retirement.⁷

Only the Other Spouse Is Covered

If your spouse has a workplace plan but you don’t, your own IRA deduction uses a much higher phase-out. For 2026:²

MAGI up to $242,000: full deduction.
MAGI $242,000 to $252,000: partial deduction.
MAGI $252,000 or more: no deduction.

The distinction matters. A household at $200,000 where one spouse has a 401(k) and the other doesn’t: the covered spouse gets no deduction (they crossed $149,000), but the uncovered spouse still deducts the full $7,500.

Backdoor Roth and the Pro-Rata Rule

Couples above the Roth income limits often contribute nondeductibly to a Traditional IRA and then convert it to a Roth. Because the contribution wasn’t deducted, only the earnings between contribution and conversion are taxable. Done quickly, that’s almost nothing.

The complication is the pro-rata rule. If you have pre-tax money sitting in any Traditional, SEP, or SIMPLE IRA in your name, the IRS treats all your Traditional IRAs as one pool for tax purposes, measured on December 31 of the conversion year.⁸ The taxable share of a conversion is the ratio of pre-tax dollars to total IRA dollars across all those accounts.

Example: you have $90,000 in a rollover IRA and add a $7,500 nondeductible contribution, giving a $97,500 balance. About 92% is pre-tax, so converting $7,500 produces roughly $6,923 of taxable income no matter which account the conversion physically comes from.

Married couples get one useful feature: pro-rata is calculated separately for each spouse. If one spouse has a large rollover IRA and the other has no pre-tax IRA money, the second spouse can do a clean backdoor Roth even while the first cannot. The first spouse can sometimes clear the way by rolling their Traditional IRA into a current employer’s 401(k), if that plan accepts incoming rollovers.

Deadlines

You can contribute for a tax year from January 1 of that year through the tax-filing deadline of the following April, extensions not counted.⁹ 2026 contributions are due by April 15, 2027.

If you contribute between January and April, tell your custodian which tax year the money is for. Without that instruction, most custodians default to the current calendar year, which can cost you a prior-year contribution or create an excess.⁶

Fixing an Excess Contribution

An excess happens when you go over the dollar limit, contribute to a Roth while your income exceeds the phase-out, or contribute more than your earned income supports. The IRS charges a 6% excise tax on the excess amount every year it stays in the account.¹⁰ A $2,000 excess costs $120 a year until it’s cleaned up.

Two ways to fix it:

Withdraw the excess plus its earnings by your tax-filing deadline including extensions (usually October 15 if you extend). The earnings are taxable in the year the contribution was made, and if you’re under 59½ they also carry the 10% early withdrawal penalty. The contribution itself is not taxed again.¹¹¹²
Leave the excess in the account and count it against next year’s contribution limit. You still owe 6% for the year of the excess, but once the new year absorbs it the penalty stops. Reduce next year’s contribution accordingly so you don’t create a fresh excess.

Report the penalty on Form 5329.¹³ If any of your Traditional IRA contributions were nondeductible, file Form 8606 as well; skipping it is a common way to end up paying tax twice on the same dollars when you eventually take distributions.⁷

1
Internal Revenue Service. 401(k) Limit Increases to $24,500 for 2026; IRA Limit Increases to $7,500
2
Internal Revenue Service. Notice 2025-67: 2026 Amounts Relating to Retirement Plans and IRAs
3
Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Topics – IRA Contribution Limits
4
Internal Revenue Service. Topic No. 451, Individual Retirement Arrangements (IRAs)
5
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 219 – Retirement Savings
6
Internal Revenue Service. Publication 590-A, Contributions to Individual Retirement Arrangements (IRAs)
7
Internal Revenue Service. About Form 8606, Nondeductible IRAs
8
Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Form 8606
9
Internal Revenue Service. Traditional and Roth IRAs
10
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 4973 – Tax on Excess Contributions to Certain Tax-Favored Accounts
11
Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Form 5329
12
Internal Revenue Service. Topic No. 557, Additional Tax on Early Distributions From Traditional and Roth IRAs
13
Internal Revenue Service. About Form 5329, Additional Taxes on Qualified Plans