You can contribute to a Roth IRA if you have earned income during the year and your modified adjusted gross income (MAGI) stays under the IRS limit for your filing status. There is no age floor and no age ceiling. For 2026, single filers get a full contribution below $153,000 and lose eligibility above $168,000; joint filers get a full contribution below $242,000 and lose eligibility above $252,000.1Internal Revenue Service. 401(k) Limit Increases to $24,500 for 2026, IRA Limit Increases to $7,500 Everything else is detail on those two tests.
You Need Earned Income
The IRS calls it “compensation,” and it means money you were paid for work: wages, salaries, tips, bonuses, commissions, and net self-employment earnings.2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 219 – Retirement Savings Taxable fellowship and stipend payments to graduate and postdoctoral students also count, which surprises a lot of people in academia.
Two situations bend the general rule in ways worth knowing. Service members can count nontaxable combat pay as earned income for IRA purposes, so a deployment year doesn’t have to be a lost year for retirement contributions.3Internal Revenue Service. Miscellaneous Provisions – Combat Zone Service Self-employed people use net earnings after subtracting the deductible half of self-employment tax, and IRS Publication 560 has the worksheets to sort out the circular math.4Internal Revenue Service. Self-Employed Individuals – Calculating Your Own Retirement Plan Contribution and Deduction
What doesn’t count: dividends, interest, capital gains, rental income, pension or annuity payments, Social Security, and unemployment. If those make up your entire year’s income, you cannot make a direct Roth contribution, no matter how modest your total is.
2026 Income Limits by Filing Status
MAGI decides how much of the annual cap you can actually use. The 2026 numbers:5Internal Revenue Service. 2026 Amounts Relating to Retirement Plans and IRAs, as Adjusted
- Single or head of household: full contribution under $153,000, reduced between $153,000 and $168,000, none at $168,000 or above.
- Married filing jointly: full contribution under $242,000, reduced between $242,000 and $252,000, none at $252,000 or above.
- Married filing separately, if you lived with your spouse at any point during the year: reduced contribution below $10,000, none at $10,000 or above. That range is not adjusted for inflation and has stood at $10,000 for years.
The married-filing-separately rule catches people. If you’re married, filed separate returns, and shared a home even briefly during the year, your Roth eligibility effectively disappears. Live apart for the entire year and the IRS treats you as a single filer with the $153,000 to $168,000 range instead.
Inside a phase-out range, your maximum contribution shrinks proportionally to how far into the range your MAGI sits. Publication 590-A carries the reduction worksheet.
How to Figure Your MAGI
Start with the adjusted gross income on your tax return and add back the traditional IRA deduction, the student loan interest deduction, the foreign earned income exclusion, the savings bond interest exclusion, and the employer-provided adoption benefits exclusion.6Internal Revenue Service. Modified Adjusted Gross Income Subtract any income from Roth conversions and rollovers, since those aren’t supposed to knock you out of eligibility.
If none of those apply, your MAGI is just your AGI. That’s the case for most people with a W-2 paycheck and no unusual deductions.
How Much You Can Contribute in 2026
The cap is $7,500 for the year, or $8,600 if you’re 50 or older.7Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Topics – IRA Contribution Limits That amount covers all of your IRAs combined, Roth and traditional. You can split it across accounts however you want, but the total can’t exceed the cap.
There’s also a floor tied to your own paycheck: you can’t contribute more than you earned. Someone who made $4,000 from a summer job can put in up to $4,000, not $7,500.
Age Doesn’t Matter
Roth IRAs have never carried an age limit at either end. The confusion usually comes from traditional IRAs, which used to block contributions after age 70½; the SECURE Act removed that ceiling starting in 2020. For Roth accounts, the only test has always been earned income.
A 16-year-old with a part-time job can open a custodial Roth IRA with a parent or guardian and start compounding decades early. Being claimed as a dependent on a parent’s return doesn’t change eligibility. At the other end, an 80-year-old who’s still working can keep contributing, and Roth IRAs carry no required minimum distributions during the owner’s lifetime.
Spousal Contributions for a Non-Working Spouse
A spouse with little or no income can still contribute to their own Roth IRA using the working spouse’s earnings. The provision is called the Kay Bailey Hutchison Spousal IRA, and the couple has to file jointly for the year of the contribution.2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 219 – Retirement Savings
The working spouse’s earnings have to cover both contributions, and each spouse is still limited to the $7,500 (or $8,600) individual cap. Both are also subject to the joint MAGI phase-out, so a household MAGI above $252,000 in 2026 shuts down direct contributions for both spouses.
If Your Income Is Too High: The Backdoor Route
Direct Roth contributions cut off at the top of the phase-out range, but Roth conversions do not. Federal law places no income limit on converting a traditional IRA to a Roth.8Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 408A – Roth IRAs That’s what people mean by the “backdoor Roth”: contribute to a traditional IRA (nondeductible contributions have no income cap), then convert the balance to a Roth.
A conversion is taxable to the extent it includes pre-tax money and earnings. If you convert right after a nondeductible contribution and nothing has grown, the tax hit is small or zero. The catch is the pro-rata rule: the IRS treats all your traditional IRAs as one pool for figuring the taxable portion of a conversion, so a large pre-tax rollover IRA sitting alongside your fresh nondeductible contribution will pull most of the conversion into taxable territory. Rolling existing pre-tax IRA balances into a current employer’s 401(k) first is the usual workaround. Report each conversion on IRS Form 8606.
If You Contribute Too Much
Excess contributions carry a 6% excise tax per year for every year the excess stays in the account.9Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 4973 – Tax on Excess Contributions to Certain Tax-Favored Accounts and Annuities To avoid it, pull the excess plus its attributable earnings out before your tax filing deadline including extensions.10Internal Revenue Service. IRA Year-End Reminders The earnings portion becomes taxable income for the year of the original contribution, and your custodian calculates the earnings using a pro-rata formula.11eCFR. 26 CFR 1.408-11 – Net Income Calculation for Returned or Recharacterized IRA Contributions
You can also recharacterize the excess as a traditional IRA contribution for the same year, which redirects the money and avoids the penalty. If the deadline passes, you can apply the excess to next year’s limit if you’re eligible, but the 6% tax applies for each year it sat uncorrected.
Deadline to Contribute for 2026
Contributions for the 2026 tax year are due by April 15, 2027. A tax filing extension does not extend the contribution deadline. When you contribute between January and April, tell your custodian which year the money is for; most will ask.