Who Can Open a Roth IRA? Income, Age, and Backdoor Rules

You can open and contribute to a Roth IRA if you have taxable earned income and your modified adjusted gross income (MAGI) is below the IRS threshold for your filing status. Those are the two Roth IRA eligibility requirements that decide the question for most people. For 2026, single filers can make a full contribution with MAGI under $153,000, and married couples filing jointly qualify with MAGI under $242,000.¹ Age doesn’t matter, and earners above the income limits still have a legal path in through a backdoor conversion.

You Need Earned Income

Federal law ties your Roth IRA contribution to taxable compensation you report on your return, and you can never contribute more than you earned for the year.² Qualifying compensation includes wages, salaries, tips, commissions, professional fees, self-employment income, and taxable alimony received under a pre-2019 divorce decree.³

Passive income does not count. Rental income, interest, stock dividends, pensions, annuities, Social Security benefits, and deferred compensation all fail this test.⁴ If your only money coming in for the year is from investments or retirement benefits, you cannot contribute on your own account. A working spouse, though, may open the door for you.

2026 Income Limits by Filing Status

Your MAGI and your filing status set your ceiling. As income climbs into a phase-out range the amount you can contribute shrinks, and once you clear the top of that range direct contributions are off the table.¹

Single or head of household: full contribution below $153,000 MAGI, partial contribution from $153,000 to $168,000, no direct contribution at $168,000 or above.
Married filing jointly: full contribution below $242,000 MAGI, partial contribution from $242,000 to $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: partial contribution below $10,000 MAGI, no direct contribution at $10,000 or above.

If you land inside a phase-out range, the reduced limit comes from a formula. Subtract the bottom of your range from your MAGI, divide by $15,000 (or $10,000 for joint and married-filing-separately filers), and reduce your maximum contribution proportionally.² The thresholds are adjusted each year for inflation.

How to Figure Your MAGI

MAGI for Roth IRA purposes starts with your adjusted gross income. Add back the traditional IRA deduction, the student loan interest deduction, the foreign earned income exclusion, and any employer-provided adoption benefits. Then subtract any income from a Roth conversion.⁵ For most people the result is very close to, or identical to, the AGI on line 11 of Form 1040.

Spousal Contributions If You Don’t Work

If you have little or no earned income but your spouse works, you can still contribute to your own Roth IRA. Under the Kay Bailey Hutchison Spousal IRA provision, a non-working or lower-earning spouse can make a full contribution as long as the couple files jointly and the working spouse’s compensation covers both contributions.⁶

There are no jointly held IRAs. Each spouse contributes to a separate account in their own name. For 2026, each spouse can contribute up to $7,500, or $8,600 at age 50 or older, as long as the total of both contributions does not exceed the taxable compensation reported on the joint return.⁷ The joint MAGI still has to fall within the limits above.

Age Doesn’t Disqualify Anyone

There is no minimum or maximum age for a Roth IRA. The only condition at any age is earned income, or eligibility through a working spouse.⁸

A child with earned income from a summer job, freelance work, or similar employment can have a Roth IRA set up as a custodial account managed by a parent or legal guardian. The minor legally owns the account and its assets while the adult handles investment decisions and administration until the child reaches the age of majority, which ranges from 18 to 21 depending on the state. The contribution ceiling is the lesser of the annual limit or the child’s actual earnings for the year.⁶

At the other end, Roth IRAs have never had an upper age limit for contributions, unlike traditional IRAs, which barred contributions after age 70½ before 2020.⁶ Roth IRAs also have no required minimum distributions during the account owner’s lifetime, so you’re never forced to draw the account down.⁹ If you’re 50 or older and still earning compensation, the higher $8,600 contribution limit for 2026 is available to you.¹⁰

If Your Income Is Too High: The Backdoor Roth

Direct contributions close off once your MAGI passes the top of your phase-out range, but a conversion route stays open. You contribute to a traditional IRA, which has no income limit for nondeductible contributions, and then convert that balance to a Roth. The IRS allows conversions from a traditional IRA to a Roth regardless of income.¹¹

The conversion is clean if you hold no other traditional IRA money. You already paid tax on the contribution because it was nondeductible, so the conversion itself generates little or no additional tax. If you do hold pre-tax balances in traditional, SEP, or SIMPLE IRAs, the pro-rata rule treats a conversion as coming proportionally from all your traditional IRA assets, pre-tax and after-tax combined, rather than letting you pick only the after-tax dollars. A meaningful share of the conversion may then be taxable. Conversions are reported on Form 8606.

How Much You Can Contribute, and By When

For the 2026 tax year, you can put up to $7,500 into all of your traditional and Roth IRAs combined. At age 50 or older by year-end, an additional $1,100 catch-up contribution brings the total to $8,600.¹ Your contribution cannot exceed your taxable compensation for the year even when it falls below these caps.

You have until the federal tax filing deadline, generally April 15 of the following year, to make contributions for a given tax year. That means 2026 contributions can be made any time from January 1, 2026, through mid-April 2027. Filing a tax extension does not extend the contribution deadline.

What Happens If You Contribute When You Shouldn’t Have

Contributing more than your limit, or contributing at all when your MAGI turned out to exceed the threshold, triggers a 6% excise tax on the excess amount for every year it remains in the account.¹²

You can avoid the penalty by withdrawing the excess contribution, along with any earnings it produced, by the due date of your tax return, including extensions.⁶ The withdrawn earnings are taxable in the year you made the contribution and may face a 10% early distribution penalty if you’re under 59½. If you filed your return before catching the mistake, you can still withdraw the excess within six months of the original due date, not counting extensions, and file an amended return.¹³ The excess-contribution tax is reported on Part IV of Form 5329.

1
Internal Revenue Service. 401(k) Limit Increases to $24,500 for 2026, IRA Limit Increases to $7,500
2
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 U.S.C. 408A – Roth IRAs
3
eCFR. 26 CFR 1.408A-3 – Contributions to Roth IRAs
4
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 U.S.C. 219 – Retirement Savings
5
Internal Revenue Service. Modified Adjusted Gross Income
6
Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Topics – IRA Contribution Limits
7
Internal Revenue Service. Publication 590-A – Contributions to Individual Retirement Arrangements
8
Internal Revenue Service. Traditional and Roth IRAs
9
Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Plan and IRA Required Minimum Distributions FAQs
10
Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Topics – Catch-Up Contributions
11
Internal Revenue Service. Retirement Plans FAQs Regarding IRAs
12
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 U.S.C. 4973 – Tax on Excess Contributions to Certain Tax-Favored Accounts and Annuities
13
Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Form 5329