4 High-Yield Dividend Stocks Worth Having in Your Roth IRA
Not every high-yield dividend stock belongs in a Roth IRA, but these four generate the kind of ordinary income that makes tax-free compounding matter most. One has raised its payout 60 times in 56 years, another locks tenants into leases…
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Roth IRAs let dividends compound tax-free forever, which makes them the ideal wrapper for names that spit out ordinary-income distributions taxed at your marginal rate outside the account. The four below yield well above the S&P 500 average, and each brings a different flavor of durable cash flow: a business development company, a gaming net-lease REIT, a tobacco cash machine, and a large-cap pharma. As one reference point, Ares Capital (NASDAQ:ARCC | ARCC Price Prediction) alone reports $1.92 in annualized dividends per share, a payout policy backed by 17 years of stable or increasing regular quarterly dividends.
Ares Capital: Ultra-High-Yield Anchor in Private Credit
Ares Capital yields 9.76% at a current price of $19.86, with a declared quarterly payout of $0.48 that has held steady from the 2023-03-14 through 2026-09-15 ex-dividend dates.
Safety read. Q2 2026 core EPS of $0.47 comfortably covers the $0.48 dividend, and net investment income rose to $359 million from $342 million a year earlier. The balance sheet carries roughly $6.0 billion of available liquidity with leverage at 1.15x. Because BDC distributions are largely ordinary income, the Roth IRA tax shelter is especially valuable.
Bull case. ARCC runs the largest publicly traded BDC portfolio at $29.35 billion across 619 companies, 71% floating rate, and a weighted average yield on debt of 10.3%. CEO Kort Schnabel described a portfolio “supported by consistent Core Earnings, healthy portfolio performance and historically low levels of non-accruing loans and problem assets.”
Risk. Non-accruals climbed to 2.4% at cost from 1.8%, NAV per share slipped to $19.35 from $19.94 at year-end 2025, and GAAP EPS fell to $0.24 from $0.52 on unrealized portfolio losses. A credit cycle downturn hits BDC book values first.
VICI Properties: Experiential REIT With CPI-Linked Escalators
VICI Properties (NYSE:VICI) yields 7.28% at $25.33. The board just bumped the quarterly payout to $0.46 from $0.45 beginning with the 2026-09-17 ex-dividend date, extending a raise pattern that includes prior step-ups to 0.415 in 2024 and 0.39 in 2023.
Safety read. Q2 2026 AFFO per share was $0.62, up 4.6% year over year, and management raised full-year 2026 AFFO guidance to $2.45 to $2.47 per diluted share. Portfolio occupancy sits at 100% with a 39.6-year weighted-average lease term and CPI-linked escalators baked in. VICI distributions are non-qualified ordinary income, which makes Roth placement highly tax-efficient.
Bull case. Revenue grew 5.7% year over year to $1.06 billion in Q2, with tenant count expanded to 16 after closing the $1.16 billion Golden Entertainment acquisition. CEO Edward Pitoniak said “VICI’s partner-driven model will continue to generate attractive, durable growth for our shareholders.”
Risk. Leverage is meaningful at ~$17.2 billion of total debt, and tenant concentration is real: Caesars accounts for roughly 38% of rent and MGM another 32%. Shares are down 18.66% over the past year on rate concerns.
Altria: Tobacco Cash Machine With Decades of Raises
Altria (NYSE:MO) yields 6.16% at $70.82, and the board just hiked the quarterly dividend to $1.11 from $1.06 for the 2026-09-15 ex-dividend date. That marked Altria’s 60th dividend increase in the past 56 years.
Safety read. Full-year 2025 dividends paid totaled $7.0 billion, with another $1.8 billion paid in Q1 2026. Adjusted diluted EPS of $1.32 in Q1 easily covered the payout, and management reaffirmed full-year 2026 adjusted diluted EPS guidance of $5.56 to $5.72. The quarterly dividend record extends back to 1999.
Bull case. Smokeable operating income rose 6.3% to $2.68 billion in Q1 at a 65.1% margin. Altria returned $8 billion to shareholders in 2025 through dividends and buybacks. CEO Billy Gifford said, “Our highly cash-generative businesses supported significant returns to shareholders through dividends and share repurchases.” Shares are up 26.77% year to date.
Risk. Domestic cigarette volumes fell 5% in Q1 2026, Marlboro retail share slipped 1.4 points to 39.7%, and the on! nicotine pouch share dropped 4.2 points to 13.4% under Zyn pressure. The company also carries negative shareholders’ equity of -$3.2 billion.
Pfizer: Big Pharma Turnaround With an Elevated Payout
Pfizer (NYSE:PFE) yields 6.22% at $27.99, with the quarterly dividend at $0.43. The payout has stepped up from $0.42 to $0.43 since the January 2025 declaration, extending a slow-and-steady increase pattern visible across the 2010 through 2026 record.
Safety read. Q1 2026 revenue of $14.45 billion grew 5.4% year over year, and adjusted diluted EPS of $0.75 beat the $0.72 estimate, the fifth consecutive EPS beat. Pfizer paid $2.4 billion in dividends in Q1 2026, and management is prioritizing the dividend with no buybacks anticipated in 2026. Free cash flow yield is around 5.75%.
Bull case. Launched and acquired products grew 22% operationally, with Padcev up 39% and Nurtec ODT/Vydura up 41%. The Vyndamax patent settlement extends effective US exclusivity to June 2031. Full-year 2026 guidance calls for revenue of $59.5 billion to $62.5 billion. Shares are up 20.52% over the past year.
Risk. Generic and biosimilar competition will cost roughly $1.5 billion in unfavorable revenue impact in 2026, Comirnaty revenue fell 59% and Paxlovid 63%, and policy overhangs include Most-Favored-Nation pricing, TrumpRx, and the IRA Medicare Part D redesign. Net debt to EBITDA sits at 3.26.
Putting the Four Together
Each of these payouts is currently well covered by earnings or AFFO, and every one gets a tax boost from Roth placement because their distributions run largely as ordinary income outside the wrapper. ARCC delivers the highest yield and the most credit-cycle sensitivity, VICI pairs a growing dividend with 39-plus-year lease terms, Altria brings a six-decade raise record backed by 65%-margin smokeable profits, and Pfizer offers the deepest valuation reset with a forward P/E of 10. Held together in a Roth IRA, the group compounds an elevated blended yield without the annual tax drag that would erode it in a taxable brokerage account (we sketched a full plan for turning a mid six-figure balance into $1,500 a month of income in a free report here).
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After two decades of patrolling the dark corners of suburbia as a police officer, Rich Duprey hung up his badge and gun to begin writing full time about stocks and investing. For the past 20 years, he’s been cruising the markets looking for companies to lock up as long-term holdings in a portfolio while writing extensively on the broad sectors of consumer goods, technology, and industrials. Because his experience isn’t from the typical financial analyst track, Rich is able to break down complex topics into understandable and useful action points for the average investor. His writings have appeared on The Motley Fool, InvestorPlace, Yahoo! Finance, Money Morning, and, of course, 24/7 Wall St. He has been featured in both U.S. and international publications, including MarketWatch, Financial Times, Forbes, Fast Company, and USA Today.
