Roth IRA Income Limits 2026: $165K and $246K Cutoffs

Priya is a 38-year-old software engineer in Austin, Texas, filing single, with a $172,000 salary and $14,000 of RSU income that vested in March — pushing her 2026 MAGI to roughly $181,000. She wants to put $7,500 into her Roth IRA like she did three years ago. She can’t. Her MAGI is above the $165,000 single cutoff, so her allowed direct Roth contribution for 2026 is exactly $0. Her actual move is the backdoor Roth: a $7,500 nondeductible traditional IRA contribution converted to Roth, which has no income limit at all. Below is the full map of where the lines fall, the partial-contribution math inside the band, and the decision once you’re over the line.

The three numbers that decide your Roth eligibility (2026)

Roth IRA eligibility is governed by IRC §408A(c)(3), which phases out the contribution as your MAGI rises through a fixed band. There are three filing-status bands, and they are not symmetric:

These are the limits on contributing, not on owning a Roth. Anyone can hold a Roth IRA; the question is whether you can put new money in this year. And the cap on that new money, once you’re under the line, is $7,500 — or $8,500 if you’re 50 or older, because of the $1,000 catch-up under IRC §219(b)(5). (That $1,000 catch-up is now indexed for inflation under SECURE 2.0 §108, but for 2026 it stays at $1,000.)

The contribution caps once you’re under the income line

• Under 50: $7,500 across all your IRAs combined (traditional + Roth) for 2026. You don’t get $7,500 to each — it’s one shared limit.
• Age 50 or older: $8,500 ($7,500 + $1,000 catch-up).
• Married couples: each spouse gets their own limit, so a household can contribute up to $15,000 (or $17,000 if both are 50+) — provided joint MAGI is under $236,000.
• Earned income floor: you can only contribute up to your taxable compensation for the year. If you earned $4,000, your cap is $4,000, not $7,500. A non-working spouse uses the working spouse’s income via the spousal IRA rule.

MAGI vs. AGI — the distinction that trips people up

The Roth limit is based on modified AGI, not AGI. Your AGI is line 11 of Form 1040. To get MAGI for Roth purposes (IRC §219(g)(3)), you start from AGI and add back a handful of items:

• The traditional IRA deduction you took
• The student loan interest deduction
• The foreign earned income exclusion and foreign housing exclusion/deduction
• The excludable savings bond interest and adoption-assistance exclusion

For most W-2 households that don’t deduct a traditional IRA contribution and have no foreign income, MAGI equals AGI. The add-backs only matter when you’re sitting right at the edge of the $150,000–$165,000 or $236,000–$246,000 band, where a few thousand dollars decides your allowed amount. One important note for the Roth calculation: you do not add back a Roth conversion that you completed during the year — conversion income is already in AGI and counts, which is why a large conversion can itself push you over the line and zero out your direct contribution for that year.

The partial-contribution math most calculators get wrong

Inside the phase-out band, your allowed contribution isn’t zero and it isn’t the full amount — it slides down a straight line. The IRS formula (Worksheet 2-2, Pub. 590-A) is:

1. Take your MAGI minus the band floor ($150,000 single / $236,000 MFJ).
2. Divide that by the band width: $15,000 for single/HOH, $10,000 for MFJ.
3. Multiply by your contribution limit ($7,500, or $8,500 if 50+). That product is your reduction.
4. Subtract the reduction from your limit, then round up to the nearest $10. If the result is over $0 but under $200, the floor is $200.

The two errors calculators make: using $10,000 as the single-filer band (it’s $15,000), and rounding down instead of up. Here’s a single filer under 50 at different MAGI levels:

At $156,000 the math runs ($6,000 / $15,000) × $7,500 = $3,000 reduction, leaving $4,500. If you’re 50+, substitute $8,500 for $7,500 in step 3 and the band still divides into $15,000 (single) or $10,000 (MFJ).

The married-filing-jointly band is narrower, so it bites harder per dollar of income. A 45-year-old MFJ couple at $241,000 MAGI sits $5,000 into the $10,000 band: ($5,000 / $10,000) × $7,500 = a $3,750 reduction, leaving each working spouse a $3,750 allowed contribution — $7,500 combined for the household instead of the full $15,000. At $244,000 MAGI the reduction climbs to ($8,000 / $10,000) × $7,500 = $6,000, leaving just $1,500 per spouse. Push one more raise to $246,001 and both direct contributions snap to $0. Because the MFJ band is only $10,000 wide while the single band is $15,000 wide, a married couple loses Roth eligibility over a tighter income strip — a $10,000 bonus can move a joint filer from full eligibility to zero, where the same bonus only partially reduces a single filer.

The married-filing-separately trap

If you file MFS and lived with your spouse at any point during the year, IRC §219(g)(4) hands you a $0–$10,000 phase-out band. At $10,001 MAGI — which almost any working person clears — your direct Roth contribution is zero. This catches couples filing separately for student-loan or liability reasons. The only escape inside MFS is to have lived apart from your spouse for the entire tax year, in which case you’re treated as single ($150K–$165K band). If you can’t meet that test, the backdoor Roth is again the answer — conversions ignore filing status and income entirely.

What most people miss: you can fix an over-contribution — and the line is MAGI, not paycheck

Two things trip up high earners every year.

First, plenty of people contribute the full $7,500 in January, then a bonus or an RSU vest in the fall pushes their MAGI over $165,000. That’s an excess contribution, and it carries a 6% excise tax (IRC §4973) for every year it stays in the account. The fix: withdraw the excess plus its attributable earnings before your tax-filing deadline (including extensions), or recharacterize it as a nondeductible traditional IRA contribution and then convert it — effectively converting a botched direct Roth into a clean backdoor Roth. Don’t leave it sitting; the 6% recurs annually until corrected.

Second, people assume their salary is the number that matters. It isn’t. A $170,000 salary with $25,000 of pre-tax 401(k) deferrals and a $4,400 HSA contribution can produce a MAGI well under $150,000 — meaning you are eligible for the full direct Roth. Maxing your 401(k) ($24,500 in 2026) and HSA before year-end is a legitimate lever to drop your MAGI back under the Roth line. Run the actual MAGI calculation before you assume you’re locked out.

Two deadlines that decide whether you can still act for 2026

Roth IRA contributions follow a different clock than Roth conversions, and conflating them costs people their best move. A direct or backdoor contribution for tax year 2026 can be made any time up to your tax-filing deadline — April 15, 2027 — even after you’ve filed, so long as you contribute by that date and designate it for 2026. That gives you months after year-end to run your final MAGI and decide. A Roth conversion, by contrast, must be completed by December 31, 2026 to count for 2026 (per the rules summarized in IRS Pub. 590-A); there is no grace period into the new year. So the backdoor Roth has a split timeline: the nondeductible traditional contribution can land by April 15, 2027, but if you want the conversion to fall in the 2026 tax year, the conversion step itself has to clear by December 31, 2026.

The other clock is the Roth five-year rule. Earnings come out tax-free only if the Roth has been open five tax years and you’re 59½ or older. Each conversion also starts its own five-year window before the converted principal can be withdrawn penalty-free (unless you’re already 59½). For a 38-year-old like Priya, the practical takeaway is simple: get the first Roth dollar in the door early — even a small backdoor contribution — because the five-year clock starts from January 1 of the year of your first contribution, not from the day you fund it.

The decision: over the line means backdoor, not no Roth

Being above $165,000 (single) or $246,000 (MFJ) does not mean you stop funding a Roth. It means you change the door you walk through. The income limits in IRC §408A(c)(3) apply only to direct contributions — there has been no income limit on Roth conversions since 2010, and TCJA permanently removed the ability to recharacterize a conversion, but conversions themselves remain wide open. So the backdoor Roth works at any income:

1. Contribute up to $7,500 ($8,500 if 50+) to a nondeductible traditional IRA — there’s no income limit on nondeductible traditional contributions.
2. Convert that traditional IRA balance to a Roth IRA. File Form 8606 to track basis.
3. Mind the pro-rata rule (IRC §408(d)(2)): if you hold any pre-tax IRA money — traditional, SEP, or SIMPLE — the conversion is taxed proportionally across pre-tax and after-tax dollars. The clean fix is rolling pre-tax IRA balances into your 401(k) before December 31 so the only IRA money left is your fresh nondeductible contribution.

Your decision lever is your December 31 IRA balance. If you’re over the direct-contribution line, the question that determines whether your backdoor Roth is tax-free or partly taxable is whether you zeroed out your pre-tax IRAs before year-end — not your salary, not your filing status. Run your projected MAGI now, and if it clears $165K single or $246K MFJ, roll any pre-tax IRA into your 401(k) before the calendar turns, then make the nondeductible contribution and convert.