2026 MAGI Calculator (Modified Adjusted Gross Income)

Background.

A MAGI calculator has to answer a question the IRS itself answers differently depending on why you're asking. Modified Adjusted Gross Income is not one universal number — it is your AGI plus a specific list of add-backs that changes based on which tax benefit you're testing eligibility for. The add-back list for a Roth IRA contribution phase-out is different from the add-back list for the Net Investment Income Tax, which is different again from the add-back list for an Affordable Care Act premium tax credit. Treating these three as interchangeable is one of the most common and consequential MAGI mistakes a taxpayer can make, because the threshold and the underlying number can both be wrong at once if you use the wrong definition.

This calculator covers two of those definitions, verified directly from the IRS's own comparison page on 2026-07-27: Roth and Traditional IRA MAGI, and Net Investment Income Tax MAGI. For Roth/IRA purposes, MAGI adds back your traditional IRA deduction, student loan interest deduction, foreign earned income and housing exclusion, and (in a combined catch-all field here) excludable savings bond interest and adoption benefits exclusions. For NIIT purposes, the add-back list is much shorter — it adds back only the foreign earned income exclusion and its related disallowed deductions, and explicitly does NOT add back your IRA deduction or student loan interest deduction the way the Roth/IRA definition does. This calculator's mode selector switches between these two formulas so you always get the correct add-back list for your actual purpose, not a generic approximation.

A third MAGI definition — for the ACA Premium Tax Credit — genuinely exists and adds back yet another combination (foreign earned income, tax-exempt interest, and nontaxable Social Security benefits). This calculator does not compute that MAGI or any resulting subsidy amount. The reason is scope discipline, not oversight: the actual premium tax credit dollar amount additionally depends on Federal Poverty Line percentages published by the Department of Health and Human Services and a county-specific benchmark 'second lowest cost Silver plan' premium — data this calculator's build process could not verify from IRS.gov, and a policy area that was in legislative flux for 2026 at the time this page was built. Rather than guess at figures from a different federal agency and a shifting legal landscape, this calculator narrows its scope to the two MAGI definitions that were fully verifiable this session, and says so plainly rather than quietly getting a subsidy estimate wrong.

Once you calculate MAGI here, the result tells you exactly where you stand: fully under the threshold, inside the Roth IRA phase-out band (where your allowed contribution shrinks proportionally — see Quanta's Roth IRA calculator for the exact reduced dollar amount), or at/above the point where Roth contributions are fully disallowed or the 3.8% NIIT applies. The 2026 thresholds used here — $153,000 to $168,000 for single Roth/IRA filers, $242,000 to $252,000 for married filing jointly, and a flat $200,000/$250,000 NIIT cliff that Congress has never indexed for inflation since 2013 — were all fetched directly from IRS.gov this session.

What is magi calculator?

Modified Adjusted Gross Income (MAGI) is Adjusted Gross Income (AGI) plus a specific set of items added back, and which items get added back depends entirely on which tax rule you're applying MAGI to. The IRS itself publishes a comparison table because the confusion is common enough to warrant one: Roth and Traditional IRA MAGI adds back the IRA deduction, student loan interest deduction, and foreign earned income/housing exclusions (among a couple of narrower items); Net Investment Income Tax MAGI adds back only the foreign earned income exclusion; and Premium Tax Credit MAGI adds back foreign earned income, tax-exempt interest, and nontaxable Social Security benefits. For most domestic taxpayers with no foreign income, no tax-exempt bond interest, and no Social Security benefits, MAGI and AGI are identical or very close regardless of which definition applies — the add-backs mostly matter for expats, retirees drawing Social Security, and municipal-bond investors.

The Roth IRA contribution phase-out uses MAGI, not AGI, to determine how much (if anything) you can contribute directly to a Roth IRA for the year: full contribution below the lower threshold, a proportionally reduced amount inside the phase-out band, and zero at or above the upper threshold. The Net Investment Income Tax uses a MAGI comparison as a threshold TEST, not a phase-out band — the 3.8% tax applies to the lesser of your net investment income or the amount your MAGI exceeds the flat $200,000/$250,000 threshold, with no gradual phase-in.

How to use this calculator.

1. 01Choose your MAGI purpose: Roth/Traditional IRA contribution phase-out, or Net Investment Income Tax threshold.
2. 02Select your filing status — Single or Married Filing Jointly.
3. 03Enter your AGI from Form 1040, line 11 (use Quanta's AGI calculator first if you don't already have this number).
4. 04Enter your foreign earned income and housing exclusion, if any — this applies in both modes.
5. 05If you selected Roth/IRA mode, also enter your traditional IRA deduction, student loan interest deduction, and any other Roth-specific add-backs (savings bond interest exclusion, adoption benefits exclusion).
6. 06Read your MAGI and compare it against the threshold shown for your selected mode and filing status.

The formula.

Reviewed on 2026-07-27 against the IRS's own MAGI comparison page and the underlying threshold sources. In Roth/Traditional IRA mode, MAGI adds back the foreign earned income and housing exclusion, the traditional IRA deduction claimed, the student loan interest deduction claimed (capped at the $2,500 statutory maximum, matching Quanta's AGI calculator), and any other Roth-specific add-backs you've pre-totaled (excludable savings bond interest and adoption benefits exclusions). In NIIT mode, only the foreign earned income exclusion is added back — the IRA deduction, student loan interest, and other Roth-specific fields are deliberately NOT applied, because Form 8960's MAGI definition does not include them.

Once MAGI is computed, it is compared against the 2026 threshold for the selected mode and filing status. Roth/Traditional IRA MAGI uses a genuine phase-out BAND: full contribution eligibility below $153,000 (single) or $242,000 (married filing jointly), zero eligibility at or above $168,000 (single) or $252,000 (married filing jointly), and a proportionally reduced amount in between — this calculator reports where you sit in that band (`statusCode` 0, 1, or 2) but the exact reduced dollar contribution limit is computed by Quanta's dedicated Roth IRA calculator, which takes the same MAGI concept further into an actual contribution-limit dollar figure. NIIT MAGI, by contrast, is compared against a single flat CLIFF — $200,000 (single) or $250,000 (married filing jointly) — with no phase-out band at all; this calculator represents that by setting the lower and upper threshold to the same number, so crossing it jumps straight from status 0 to status 2. The $200,000/$250,000 NIIT thresholds have never been adjusted for inflation since the tax was created in 2013, unlike almost every other dollar figure in the tax code.

A worked example.

Frequently asked questions.

References& sources.

1. [1]Internal Revenue Service. "Modified Adjusted Gross Income (MAGI)." IRS.gov (comparison of MAGI definitions by tax benefit).
2. [2]Internal Revenue Service (2025). "401(k) limit increases to $24,500 for 2026, IRA limit increases to $7,500." IRS Newsroom.
3. [3]Internal Revenue Service. Topic No. 559, Net Investment Income Tax.
4. [4]26 U.S.C. §221 — Interest on Education Loans (student loan interest deduction cap, reused from the AGI calculator).