Roth IRA Contribution Limits and Income Phase-Out Ranges

For 2026, the Roth IRA contribution limit is $7,500 if you’re under 50 and $8,600 if you’re 50 or older, provided your modified adjusted gross income falls below the IRS thresholds for your filing status. Earn above those thresholds, and your allowable contribution shrinks or disappears entirely.¹

The Base and Catch-Up Amounts

The $7,500 base limit is up from $7,000 in 2024 and 2025. If you turn 50 or older by the end of the calendar year, you can add $1,100 in catch-up contributions for a total of $8,600. That catch-up figure is higher than the flat $1,000 it had been for years because the SECURE 2.0 Act of 2022 started indexing IRA catch-up contributions to inflation beginning in 2025.¹

Two other ceilings apply on top of the statutory number. Your contribution can never exceed your taxable compensation for the year: if you earned $4,000 in wages, $4,000 is your maximum regardless of the $7,500 cap. And there’s no upper age limit. As long as you have earned income and fall within the income thresholds, you can keep contributing whether you’re 25 or 85.²

Taxable compensation means wages, salaries, commissions, tips, bonuses, and net self-employment income. Certain alimony payments from divorce agreements finalized before 2019 and some graduate fellowship stipends also count. Rental income, interest, dividends, pension payments, and annuity income do not.³

Income Phase-Out Ranges for 2026

Where your MAGI lands inside these ranges determines whether you can make a full contribution, a reduced one, or none at all.¹

Single and Head of Household

The phase-out range runs from $153,000 to $168,000. Below $153,000, you can contribute the full $7,500 (or $8,600 if 50+). Between $153,000 and $168,000, your limit gradually decreases. At $168,000 or above, direct Roth IRA contributions are off the table.

Married Filing Jointly and Qualifying Surviving Spouses

The phase-out range spans $242,000 to $252,000. A household with MAGI below $242,000 can make full contributions for each spouse. Above $252,000, no direct contributions are allowed.

Married Filing Separately

If you’re married, file separately, and lived with your spouse at any point during the year, the phase-out range is $0 to $10,000. That range isn’t indexed to inflation and hasn’t changed in years. Even modest income effectively blocks direct Roth contributions under this filing status. If you filed separately but did not live with your spouse at any time during the year, you’re treated the same as a single filer with the $153,000 to $168,000 range.

What MAGI Means Here

Your adjusted gross income appears on line 11 of Form 1040. MAGI takes that number and adds back certain deductions, including student loan interest, foreign earned income exclusions, foreign housing deductions, and certain educational expenses.⁴

For most W-2 employees without foreign income, AGI and MAGI are the same. The distinction matters mainly if you claimed one of those specific deductions. Getting the number wrong is where people create problems, because a small miscalculation can push you into a lower contribution bracket or make you ineligible altogether.

Calculating a Partial Contribution

When your income lands inside a phase-out range, you don’t lose eligibility completely. You get a reduced limit based on where you fall. The IRS provides a worksheet in Publication 590-A, but the logic works like this:⁵

Subtract the bottom of your phase-out range from your MAGI.
Divide that result by the width of your phase-out range ($15,000 for single filers, $10,000 for joint filers and married filing separately).
Multiply that decimal by your applicable contribution limit ($7,500, or $8,600 if 50+).
Subtract the Step 3 result from your contribution limit. Round up to the nearest $10.

Example. You’re a single filer, age 40, with a 2026 MAGI of $158,000. Subtract $153,000 to get $5,000. Divide by $15,000 to get 0.333. Multiply by $7,500 to get $2,500. Subtract from $7,500, and your reduced limit is $5,000.

Two protections apply for small contributors. If the calculation produces a number greater than zero but less than $200, the IRS lets you contribute $200. Any partial limit must be rounded up to the nearest $10.

Spousal Contributions for One-Earner Couples

If one spouse has little or no earned income, the working spouse’s compensation can support Roth contributions for both. Each spouse can contribute up to the full limit as long as the couple’s combined contributions don’t exceed the taxable compensation on their joint return.²

You have to file jointly. A married couple filing separately cannot use one spouse’s income to qualify the other. The joint filer phase-out range still applies, so household MAGI must fall below $252,000 for any direct Roth contributions in 2026.

The Deadline to Contribute

You can make Roth IRA contributions for a given tax year from January 1 of that year through the tax filing deadline the following April. For 2026, that means you have until approximately April 15, 2027.⁶

A filing extension does not buy you extra time. Even if you extend your return to October, the Roth contribution deadline stays at the original April date.⁷ If your income is borderline and you aren’t sure whether you’ll clear the phase-out range, you can wait until closer to April when your final MAGI is clearer.

If You Contribute Too Much

If you contribute more than you’re allowed, the IRS imposes a 6% excise tax on the excess for each year it remains in the account.² You have two ways to fix it:

Withdraw the excess plus any earnings it generated before your tax filing deadline, including extensions. The earnings will be taxable and may face a 10% early withdrawal penalty if you’re under 59½, but you’ll avoid the ongoing 6% excise tax.⁶
Ask your IRA custodian to recharacterize the Roth contribution as a traditional IRA contribution. The same filing deadline applies, including extensions. Your custodian will calculate any earnings or losses that need to move with the recharacterized amount, and the transaction gets reported on Form 1099-R.

Miss both deadlines and the 6% tax keeps hitting every year until you either withdraw the excess or absorb it with a future year’s unused contribution room.

If You’re Over the Income Ceiling

If your MAGI exceeds the top of the phase-out range, you can still fund a Roth indirectly through the backdoor Roth strategy, which remains legal as of 2026. Congress considered restricting it in recent years, but the One Big Beautiful Bill Act of 2025 left it in place.

The steps: make a nondeductible contribution to a traditional IRA, which has no income limit for contributions, then convert that traditional IRA balance to a Roth. File IRS Form 8606 to report the nondeductible contribution and track your cost basis.

The catch is the pro-rata rule. The IRS treats all of your traditional IRAs as a single pool when calculating taxes on a conversion. If you hold $95,000 in pre-tax traditional IRA money and add $5,000 in after-tax money, you can’t convert the $5,000 tax-free. The IRS considers 95% of any conversion taxable, because only 5% of your total traditional IRA balance was after-tax. That makes the backdoor Roth expensive if you already hold significant pre-tax IRA balances from old 401(k) rollovers or deductible contributions.

1
Internal Revenue Service. 401(k) Limit Increases to $24,500 for 2026, IRA Limit Increases to $7,500
2
Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Topics – IRA Contribution Limits
3
Internal Revenue Service. Topic No. 451, Individual Retirement Arrangements (IRAs)
4
Internal Revenue Service. Adjusted Gross Income
5
Internal Revenue Service. Publication 590-A, Contributions to Individual Retirement Arrangements
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Internal Revenue Service. IRA Year-End Reminders
7
Internal Revenue Service. Traditional and Roth IRAs