Roth IRA Rules You Should Know During Tax Season

Investing in a Roth IRA is a popular way to save for retirement, but it doesn’t offer immediate tax benefits. Because you fund these accounts with after-tax contributions, you won’t be able to deduct your contribution on Form 1040 at tax time, as you can with a traditional IRA. Nevertheless, it could be well worth your while to open a Roth if you’re eligible.

The IRS offers a nice incentive: You have until the April tax return deadline to set up and fund an IRA for the prior tax year. That means you have until April 15, 2025 to open and contribute to a Roth for 2024. (You can open and fund your Roth IRA for 2024, and then also fund that Roth or another IRA for 2025.)

That same April deadline for prior-year contributions applies whether you opt for a traditional IRA or a Roth IRA, but many taxpayers prefer the Roth because of its long-term tax advantages. Put simply, if you think your tax rate will be higher in a few years than it is now — which tends to be true for people who are earlier on their career path — then a Roth can make a lot of sense.

Still, a traditional IRA does offer an immediate tax break: If you qualify, you can reduce your taxable income by the amount of your traditional IRA contribution, and thus lower your tax bill. Money in a traditional IRA grows tax-deferred, with no tax owed until you withdraw the money. However, after you make your initial after-tax contribution, a Roth IRA is tax-free forever, so even when you take withdrawals in retirement, you won’t owe any tax.

The IRS, however, has specific rules on who is eligible to open a Roth IRA and how much money you can contribute each year.

Roth IRA contribution limits

There are three main rules related to Roth IRA contributions.

1. The first rule of Roth IRA contributions relates to the type of income: You must have “earned income” to be eligible to open a Roth or traditional IRA. You can’t contribute to an IRA if your income is from unearned sources, such as investments. If you’re paid wages, a salary, tips, professional fees or bonuses, then you’re eligible to open an IRA so long as your contributions don’t exceed your income.
2. The second rule of Roth IRA contributions is that there’s a limit to how much you can contribute. The maximum amount you can contribute to your Roth IRA depends on your age, with people who are 50 or older eligible for catch-up contributions:

3. There’s a third rule of Roth IRA contributions: Anyone who has earned income — even a child — can open an IRA, but you can’t contribute more than you earned. So if your income is only $1,500 in a given year, then $1,500 is the most you can contribute. In other words, the maximum you can contribute is the lower of your earned income or $7,000 ($8,000 if 50+).

There is an exception that allows people to contribute to an IRA even if they don’t have earned income. If you don’t have earned income but your spouse does, and you file a joint tax return, then each spouse can make a contribution to their own individual Roth IRA up to the current contribution limit, though the combined amount can’t exceed the taxable compensation reported on your joint tax return.

Roth IRA income limits

Another way that the traditional IRA and Roth IRA differ is that the Roth IRA imposes income limits on who is eligible to contribute. (In contrast, anyone can contribute to a traditional IRA; there are income limits on deducting that traditional IRA contribution but only if you or your spouse has a retirement plan at work.)

If you earn too much money, you’re ineligible for a Roth IRA. Also, you can no longer contribute to the Roth account you opened when you were earning less. If your income is between the phase-out amounts (see below), you can make a partial contribution, less than the full $7,000 (or $8,000 if you’re 50 or older).

The income limits are tied to your modified adjusted gross income, which is your adjusted gross income with some items added back in, including any amount you claimed for the student loan interest deduction or a traditional IRA deduction (here’s the IRS worksheet to calculate modified AGI for a Roth IRA).

If you lived with your spouse at any time during the tax year but decided to file separately, then you can’t contribute to a Roth if your modified AGI was more than $10,000.

For people who fall into the “partial contribution” income range, the IRS walks you through how to calculate the reduced amount you can contribute to a Roth IRA, while Publication 590-A has a worksheet.

If you earn more than the income limits for a Roth IRA, consider contributing to a traditional IRA, which doesn’t have any income limitations for contributions. (Though if you or your spouse has a retirement plan at work, then income limits may affect your ability to deduct that IRA contribution from your taxes.)

Another option to consider: a workplace retirement plan, which generally offers much more generous contribution limits than IRAs. The contribution limit for 401(k), 403(b) and most 457 plans is $23,500 in 2025, up from $23,000 in 2024. 

Keep in mind that if you’re eligible to contribute to a Roth IRA, you can also:

• Contribute to a traditional IRA in the same year, as long as your total contribution to both your Roth and your traditional doesn’t exceed $7,000 ($8,000 if 50 or older).
• Contribute to a workplace plan. For example, you can contribute $23,500 to your 401(k) in 2025 (add an extra $7,500 if you’re 50 or older, or an extra $11,250 if you’re 60 to 63), plus $7,000 to your Roth IRA (or $8,000 if you’re 50 or older).

Backdoor Roth IRAs

There’s another way to open a Roth IRA, even if you earn more than the income limits — though the process is complex. Regardless of your earnings, you can turn your traditional IRA into a Roth with a backdoor Roth IRA.

Essentially, the idea with a backdoor Roth IRA is that you make a nondeductible contribution to a traditional IRA (in other words, this is after-tax money) and then convert that money to a Roth IRA. 

It’s similar to a typical Roth IRA conversion, in which you take your untaxed money in a traditional IRA and convert it to a Roth IRA — at which point you’ll owe income tax on all of the money you converted (the taxes will be due when you file your return for that year).

A backdoor Roth is similar but a little different: You purposely make nondeductible (after-tax) contributions to a traditional IRA, because you know you’re going to move that money to a Roth. However, such conversions are subject to the IRS’ pro rata rule, which takes into account any pre-tax money you have in any of your traditional IRAs (excluding inherited IRAs).

In other words, you can’t choose to rollover only the after-tax IRA money. Say that you have $100,000 total in a few different traditional IRAs, and you’ve claimed tax deductions for $50,000 of that money. In other words, 50 percent of your traditional IRA assets have been taxed and 50 percent haven’t. Then, say you decide to convert $20,000 of your nondeductible (after-tax) traditional IRA money to a Roth IRA. The IRS is going to say that 50 percent of that $20,000 is taxable. The IRS’ pro rata rule prevents you from choosing to roll solely the after-tax $20,000 into a backdoor Roth. Instead, you need to calculate the tax based on how much of your total IRA holdings are pre-tax vs. after-tax.

A backdoor Roth can be appealing if your income precludes you from contributing directly to a Roth IRA. But the process can be tricky, so you’ll want to be sure you understand all the steps involved to avoid any unpleasant surprises at tax time. What’s more, you can’t “undo” a Roth IRA conversion by recharacterizing it as a traditional IRA. That option changed under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, so now you have to live with your conversion decision.

More Roth IRA tax rules to know

The reason why Roth IRAs are so attractive to many taxpayers is because withdrawals are tax-free forever. While contributions are made after-tax, you won’t pay taxes on any withdrawals after the age of 59½.

There are other tax rules for Roth IRAs that may also make this type of account preferable:

• Withdraw your contributions at any time, no matter your age, tax-free. Since you already paid taxes on your contributions, they are yours to withdraw whenever you want (though ideally you leave that money invested for retirement). But if you withdraw your investment earnings before 59½, you’ll likely owe income taxes and a 10% penalty.

• No required minimum distributions. With a traditional IRA, you must take a required minimum distribution once you hit age 73, but that rule doesn’t apply to Roth IRAs. If you have multiple sources of income in retirement, you can let money in a Roth IRA continue to grow.

• Transfer wealth tax-free. Money in a Roth IRA that is passed along to heirs is tax-free, so long as the account owner had the account for more than five years. This can save inheritors significant taxes, though most heirs must take required distributions and abide by restrictions on inherited IRAs.

• No age limits. You can contribute to a traditional IRA or a Roth IRA no matter how old you are, as long as you have earned income. There’s also no minimum age to open a traditional or Roth IRA, as long as you have qualified earned income, though parents will need to set up a custodial account for children.