IRA Contribution Limits

What you may actually put into an IRA at your income: the Roth phase-out, the deduction test that needs a workplace plan, and the $200 floor most tools drop.

A 401(k) has no income test. An IRA has two, they do different jobs, and mixing them up is why people believe a workplace plan stops them funding an IRA. It doesn't, and never has.

One limit, shared across every IRA you own

For 2026 the ceiling is $7,500, plus a $1,100 catch-up from the year you turn 50. That's the total across Roth and traditional together, not a limit for each.

It's also completely separate from your 401(k). The $24,500 you may defer at work doesn't touch it, so someone with both can put money into both in the same year. The workplace ceilings are set out separately, and they behave differently in almost every respect.

One catch-up detail trips people up. The IRA catch-up doesn't step up again between 60 and 63 the way the 401(k) one does; it's a single step at 50, and then flat for the rest of your life.

The Roth test decides whether you may contribute at all

This is the one most people mean by "the IRA income limit". Above a certain modified AGI you cannot make a direct Roth IRA contribution, and between two figures the allowance reduces on a sliding scale.

That last row is not a typo. Filing separately while living with your spouse at any point in the year collapses the range to almost nothing, which removes the Roth IRA for practically everyone in that position. Filing separately but living apart for the whole year, you're treated as single.

Inside a range the reduction is proportional, then rounded up to the next $10, and anything above zero is lifted to a $200 minimum. That $200 floor is in the statute and it's the detail online calculators most often drop, which makes them report zero where the real answer is $200.

How is the Roth IRA phase-out actually calculated?

Work out what fraction of the range your income sits into, cut the limit by that fraction, round what's left up to the next $10, and lift anything still above zero to at least $200. Six steps, in that order. The last two are the ones online tools drop.

1. Start with the full limit for your age: $7,500, or $7,500 plus the $1,100 catch-up from 50.
2. Subtract the bottom of your range from your modified AGI. A single filer on $161,000 sits $8,000 above the $153,000 where the range starts.
3. Measure the range itself. $168,000 less $153,000 is $15,000 wide, so $8,000 in is eight fifteenths of the way through.
4. Cut the limit by that fraction. Eight fifteenths of $7,500 is $4,000, which leaves $3,500.
5. Round up to the next $10. $3,500 already is one, so nothing moves.
6. Apply the $200 floor. $3,500 clears it easily, so $3,500 is the answer.

Steps 5 and 6 are where hand arithmetic and most online tools part company. Push the same filer to $167,900 and the proportion leaves $50, which §408A(c)(3) then lifts to $200 because it hasn't actually reached zero.

A tool that stops at step 4 reports the $50.

One that also forgets the floor reports nothing at all, which tells someone holding $200 of real contribution room that they have none.

The round-up is the quieter of the two. Halving a $7,500 limit across a $15,000 single range lands on a multiple of $10 unless your MAGI is an odd number of dollars, so it almost never shows itself there. On the joint range it bites constantly, because the same limit is spread over $10,000.

The traditional test decides something narrower

Here's the confusion worth clearing up. The income test on a traditional IRA doesn't govern whether you may contribute. It governs whether you get a deduction for contributing.

You can always put money into a traditional IRA. If your income is above the range and a workplace plan covers you, the contribution is simply non-deductible: it creates basis, you track it on Form 8606 for the rest of the account's life, and that basis comes back out untaxed later.

And the test only exists at all when a workplace plan is in the picture. With neither you nor your spouse covered, income is irrelevant and the whole contribution is deductible however much you earn. Most summaries forget that case.

Above the Roth range there is a route, and a trap in it

The usual workaround is a non-deductible traditional contribution converted to Roth. It's legal and common.

One feature of it catches people out badly. The pro-rata rule in IRC §408(d)(2) treats every traditional IRA you own, along with any SEP or SIMPLE, as one account at the moment you convert. Hold a pre-tax IRA balance anywhere and the conversion doesn't lift out your fresh after-tax dollars on their own. It lifts a proportional slice of everything you hold, and the pre-tax part of that slice is taxable in the year you convert.

The fraction is your after-tax basis over your total IRA balance, and that total is measured at 31 December of the conversion year, not on the day you press the button. The ordering is the part people miss. A rollover you do in November can spoil a conversion you did back in March, because December is the balance the IRS asks about on Form 8606.

The basis you didn't get to use isn't lost. It carries forward on Form 8606 and comes out untaxed eventually, so nothing is destroyed. What's gone is the clean tax-free conversion people thought they'd made, and they normally discover it the following April, when the tax on the conversion turns out not to be zero.

There's an escape, and it runs the opposite way to every other piece of advice on this page. Plenty of 401(k) plans accept an incoming rollover of pre-tax IRA money. Send the pre-tax IRA into the workplace plan, the IRA side falls to nothing, and by 31 December the fraction is clean again. Not every plan allows it. Your summary plan description says whether yours does, and that's worth ten minutes before you decide the door is shut.

A 401(k) balance doesn't enter the fraction.

Which produces a consequence worth knowing before you act instead of after: rolling an old 401(k) into an IRA can quietly close this door, because it turns a balance the rule ignores into one it counts. The four options when you leave a job covers that decision.

A caveat, and a real one. Of everything on this site this is the rule I'm least comfortable summarising, because it depends on balances I can't see and on a date that falls months after most people act, so get someone to look at your actual numbers before you rely on a word of it.

Which account first

How much you may fund and where to fund it are separate questions, and the second one has a clearer answer.

Up to the employer match, the 401(k) wins and nothing else comes close. A 50% match is an immediate 50% return that no fee and no fund selection can offset. Above the match it turns on cost, and that's where an IRA often pulls ahead, because it offers the whole market instead of a menu somebody else picked. Whether your own plan is dearer has a written answer: the annual fee disclosure gives the all-in figure, and holding it next to a broad index fund's expense ratio takes about five minutes. Price that gap over your remaining years.

Between the two Roth accounts, the differences are real and they run in both directions. Contribution ordering, income tests and the five-year clock all work differently. And if you're still weighing pre-tax against Roth at all, that decision turns on one number.

Frequently asked questions

What is the IRA contribution limit?

$7,500 for 2026, plus a $1,100 catch-up from age 50. That figure is one ceiling across every IRA you hold, so splitting it between a Roth and a traditional creates no extra room. It is entirely separate from the $24,500 you may defer into a 401(k).

Can I contribute to an IRA if I have a 401(k) at work?

Yes, always. A workplace plan never blocks an IRA. What it can do is remove the deduction on a traditional IRA contribution once your income passes the phase-out range, and that is a different thing from being barred.

What is the Roth IRA income limit?

For 2026 the contribution phases out between $153,000 and $168,000 of modified AGI if you're single, and between $242,000 and $252,000 filing jointly. Inside the range the limit reduces ratably; above the top of it a direct Roth IRA contribution isn't available at all.

Can I contribute to both a Roth IRA and a traditional IRA?

Yes, but they share one annual limit. Put $7,500 into a Roth and there is nothing left for a traditional in the same year. The only reason to split is if part of your Roth allowance has been phased out by income and you want to use the rest.

Is a 401(k) or an IRA better?

Up to the employer match the 401(k) wins on arithmetic nothing else can touch. Above the match it turns on fees and investment choice, and an IRA usually offers wider and cheaper options than a small employer's plan. A large employer's plan with institutional pricing can beat a retail IRA, so the fee disclosure decides it.

What happens if I contribute too much to an IRA?

The excise tax is 6% a year. It bites for every year the excess stays in the account, so withdraw the excess plus its earnings before your tax filing deadline, including extensions, and it doesn't apply at all. The earnings come back to you as taxable income for the year the contribution was made.

Where these figures come from

The 2026 contribution limit, the catch-up and both sets of phase-out ranges are in IRS Notice 2025-67 (IR-2025-111). The ratable reduction and its roundings are in IRC §219(g)(2) for the traditional deduction and §408A(c)(3) for the Roth contribution. The pro-rata rule on conversions is IRC §408(d)(2).