Income ceiling

2026 Saver's Credit Eligibility Checker

The Saver's Credit, formally the retirement savings contributions credit, targets low and moderate income households that put money into a retirement account. Eligibility begins with an income ceiling, and the 2026 ceilings rose modestly across every filing status.

This checker compares adjusted gross income with the published ceiling for a filing status and reports the distance to that ceiling. It does not compute a credit amount, because the release used here publishes the ceiling but not the rate tiers that determine the credit.

Official 2026 figures used here

How to read the result

The ceiling is a hard cutoff rather than a phaseout. A household one dollar above the limit is not eligible for a reduced credit; it is outside the provision entirely. That makes the number worth checking before a year-end contribution, because the contribution itself may lower adjusted gross income enough to fall back under the ceiling.

The increases follow the same pattern across all four statuses, reflecting indexation rather than any change in policy. The joint ceiling is roughly double the single ceiling, which is unusual among retirement provisions where joint limits are often less than double the corresponding single figure.

Eligibility depends on the contribution as well as the income. The credit requires a voluntary contribution to a qualifying plan or account, and distributions taken from such an account in the same period reduce the amount that can be counted. A household under the ceiling with no contribution has nothing to claim.

Three further conditions sit outside this checker. The taxpayer must be at least 18, must not be a full-time student, and must not be claimed as a dependent on someone else's return. Those filters remove many low-income filers who would otherwise qualify on income alone.

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