A 58-year-old engineer earning $310,000, with $1.4 million already stacked in a 401(k), asks a familiar question on retirement forums every spring: how do I get money into a Roth IRA when the IRS says my income is too high? The answer is the same one Suze Orman and Clark Howard have been preaching for a decade, and the math in 2026 still works cleanly if you set it up in the right order.
The income cap that locks high earners out
The IRS phases out direct Roth IRA contributions for single filers between $153,000 and $168,000 of modified adjusted gross income in 2026, and for joint filers between $242,000 and $252,000. Above those upper bounds, the door slams shut. A two-income household at $290,000 cannot contribute a dollar to a Roth IRA directly, even though it is the most flexible retirement account on the menu: no required minimum distributions during the owner’s lifetime, tax-free withdrawals after 59½, tax-free growth, tax-free inheritance for heirs.
The workaround exploits a quirk Congress left open. There is no income limit on a nondeductible traditional IRA, and there is no income limit on converting a traditional IRA to a Roth. Fund the first, convert to the second the following week, and you have done what the income cap was supposed to prevent. Suze Orman calls it “going through the back door,” and the mechanic has survived every tax overhaul since 2010.
The $7,500 move, step by step
Open a traditional IRA, contribute the 2026 limit of $7,500 with after-tax dollars, do not take the deduction, and convert that balance to a Roth IRA. If you are 50 or older, the contribution limit jumps to $8,600 thanks to the $1,100 catch-up. A married couple where both spouses run the play funnels $17,200 of permanent tax-free growth into Roth accounts in a single year, with no W-2 income test and no employer plan required.
At a 7% annual return, $8,600 compounded for 15 years grows to roughly $23,700 of money that will never face another federal tax bill. Run the strategy every year from 55 to 70 and the after-tax balance approaches a quarter million dollars, in a market where the 10-year Treasury sits near 4.5% and any taxable yield above that line is being chipped away by ordinary income tax inside a brokerage account.
The pro-rata trap that wrecks the strategy
The pro-rata rule is the tripwire. The IRS treats every traditional, SEP, and SIMPLE IRA you own as one combined pool when you do a Roth conversion. If a $200,000 rollover IRA from a previous employer is sitting in the background and you add an $8,600 nondeductible contribution, only about 4% of any conversion comes out tax-free. The other 96% gets taxed as ordinary income.
For our 58-year-old engineer in the 32% federal bracket (single filers between $201,775 and $256,225 in 2026), converting $8,600 with a $200,000 rollover IRA in the background produces roughly $2,640 in surprise federal tax instead of zero. That is the same money getting taxed twice: once on the deposit because it was already after-tax, once on the conversion because the pro-rata rule says so.
What to do this week
- Pull your December 31, 2025 statements for every traditional, SEP, and SIMPLE IRA in your name and add the balances. Anything above zero triggers pro-rata on a 2026 conversion. Your spouse’s IRAs are calculated separately, so the trap is individual.
- Call your current 401(k) administrator and ask whether the plan accepts incoming IRA rollovers. Most do. Reverse-rolling pre-tax IRA money into an employer plan removes it from the pro-rata formula, because 401(k) balances are not counted. Get the transfer completed before December 31, 2026.
- Fund the nondeductible IRA in January, convert within a week or two to limit taxable growth in the traditional account, and file Form 8606 with your 2026 return to document the basis. Skip the form and the IRS will tax the same dollars again at withdrawal. The form is two pages and it is the entire paper trail that keeps this strategy legal.
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