Who Can Contribute to a Roth IRA? Limits, Spousal Rules, Fixes

You can contribute to a Roth IRA if you have earned income from work and your modified adjusted gross income (MAGI) falls under the limit for your filing status. That’s the whole test. There is no minimum or maximum age, a non-working spouse can qualify through their partner’s earnings, and for 2026 the direct contribution phases out between $153,000 and $168,000 for single filers and between $242,000 and $252,000 for married couples filing jointly.¹

You Need Earned Income

The one requirement you can’t work around is earned income. The IRS defines this as money you receive for work you actually perform: wages, salaries, tips, bonuses, commissions, self-employment income, and professional fees. Nontaxable combat pay counts, which matters for service members deployed to combat zones. Taxable alimony under a divorce agreement executed on or before December 31, 2018 qualifies, though alimony under newer agreements does not. Graduate and postdoctoral stipends that are included in your gross income also count, even when they don’t show up on a W-2.²

What doesn’t count: investment dividends, interest, rental income, pension payments, annuities, Social Security benefits, and deferred compensation. Passive and non-service income are excluded from the definition of compensation for IRA purposes.³

Your contribution can never exceed what you actually earned. A college student who makes $3,200 from a part-time job in 2026 can contribute at most $3,200 that year, no matter what the annual limit is.⁴

2026 Income Limits by Filing Status

Even with earned income, your MAGI determines whether you can contribute the full amount, a reduced amount, or nothing at all. For the 2026 tax year:¹

Single or head of household: full contribution below $153,000, reduced between $153,000 and $168,000, no direct contribution at $168,000 or above.
Married filing jointly: full contribution below $242,000, reduced between $242,000 and $252,000, no direct contribution at $252,000 or above.
Married filing separately, if you lived with your spouse at any point during the year: reduced contribution between $0 and $10,000, no contribution at $10,000 or above. This range is not indexed for inflation.

The married-filing-separately rule is the harshest of the three. If you lived with your spouse for even part of the year and file separately, the phase-out starts at $0, which shuts almost everyone out. If you lived apart from your spouse for the entire year and file separately, you’re treated as single for Roth purposes and use the $153,000 to $168,000 range instead.⁵

If your MAGI falls inside a phase-out range, the IRS worksheet reduces your limit proportionally to how far into the range you are. The result rounds up to the nearest $10 and won’t drop below $200 until it phases out entirely.

2026 Contribution Ceilings

The base annual limit across all your traditional and Roth IRAs combined is $7,500 for 2026. If you’re 50 or older, the catch-up contribution adds $1,100, for a total of $8,600. Under SECURE 2.0 the catch-up amount is now indexed to inflation and will keep adjusting in future years.⁴

That figure is a combined cap. Put $3,000 into a traditional IRA and you can add at most $4,500 to a Roth IRA that year. There are no separate ceilings for each account type.

You have until the tax-filing deadline to make a contribution for a given year. For 2026 contributions, that’s April 15, 2027.

Spousal Roth IRA Contributions

The earned income rule has one exception. Under the Kay Bailey Hutchison Spousal IRA rules, a working spouse can fund a Roth IRA for a non-working or low-earning spouse. The couple must be legally married and file a joint return.²

Each spouse can contribute up to the full $7,500 (or $8,600 at 50+), but the combined contributions can’t exceed the couple’s total taxable compensation. If one spouse earns $120,000 and the other earns nothing, the working spouse can fund both accounts to the maximum. The accounts must be held in each spouse’s own name; joint IRAs don’t exist under federal law.²

This benefit ends with divorce or legal separation. In the year the divorce is finalized, each person files under their own status and must independently meet the earned income and MAGI requirements.

Age Doesn’t Matter

Roth IRAs have never had a maximum age for contributions. If you have qualifying earned income and your MAGI is within the limits, you can keep contributing at 25 or 85. Traditional IRAs used to bar contributions after age 70½, but the SECURE Act of 2019 removed that cap, and Roth IRAs were never subject to it in the first place.⁴

There’s no minimum age either. A child who earns money from a summer job, lawn care, acting, or modeling can have a Roth IRA. Because minors can’t enter into contracts, a parent or legal guardian opens and manages the account as a custodial Roth IRA. The account belongs to the child, and the same contribution and income limits apply. When the child reaches the age of majority under their state’s law, the custodian transfers control.

The income has to genuinely belong to the child. Wages, tips, and self-employment earnings count. Allowances, birthday money, and gifts do not. Anyone can supply the actual dollars deposited, though. A grandparent can write a $3,000 check to fund a child’s Roth as long as the child earned at least $3,000 that year.⁴

If Your Income Is Too High

Above the phase-out ceiling, you can’t contribute directly to a Roth IRA, but the tax code doesn’t limit conversions. High earners can make a nondeductible contribution to a traditional IRA and then convert that balance to a Roth. This is the “backdoor Roth.”

The catch is the pro-rata rule. The IRS treats all your traditional, SEP, and SIMPLE IRA balances as a single pool when it calculates the tax on a conversion. If you already have $95,000 in pre-tax traditional IRA money and you add $7,500 in after-tax dollars, you cannot convert only the after-tax portion. Roughly 93% of anything you convert will be taxable, because 93% of your total IRA balance is pre-tax.⁶ The strategy works cleanly when you have no existing pre-tax IRA balances. Either way, you’ll file Form 8606 to report the nondeductible contribution and calculate the taxable portion of the conversion.⁷

If You Contributed and Shouldn’t Have

Putting money into a Roth when your income disqualifies you, or contributing more than your limit, creates an excess contribution. The IRS charges a 6% excise tax on the excess for every year it stays in the account.⁸

You have two ways to fix it before the penalty applies:

Withdraw the excess plus any earnings it produced by your tax-filing deadline, including extensions. Done in time, no excise tax applies. The earnings you pull out are taxable income and may face the 10% early withdrawal penalty if you’re under 59½.⁹
Recharacterize the contribution by asking your IRA custodian to reclassify it from a Roth to a traditional IRA (or the reverse) through a trustee-to-trustee transfer. This also has to happen by the filing deadline, extensions included. The contribution is then treated as if it had been made to the other type of account from the start.¹⁰

Miss the deadline and the 6% tax applies each year until you correct the excess. You can eventually absorb it by contributing less than your maximum in a later year and applying the leftover excess to that year’s limit, but the penalty still runs for every year it sat uncorrected.

1
Internal Revenue Service. 401(k) Limit Increases to $24,500 for 2026, IRA Limit Increases to $7,500
2
Internal Revenue Service. Publication 590-A (2025), Contributions to Individual Retirement Arrangements (IRAs)
3
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 U.S. Code 219 – Retirement Savings
4
Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Topics – IRA Contribution Limits
5
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 408A – Roth IRAs
6
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 U.S. Code 408 – Individual Retirement Accounts
7
Internal Revenue Service. About Form 8606, Nondeductible IRAs
8
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 U.S. Code 4973 – Tax on Excess Contributions to Certain Tax-Favored Accounts and Annuities
9
Internal Revenue Service. IRA Year-End Reminders
10
Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Plans FAQs Regarding IRAs