The deadline to contribute to a Roth IRA for 2019 was July 15, 2020. The deadline to contribute to a Roth IRA for 2020 is April 15, 2021 (the tax-filing deadline).

You can contribute to a Roth IRA after filing your taxes and you don’t even need to amend your return to do so. The only caveat is that you must fund the account with income earned in that tax year.

Even if you have already filed your taxes, you can still contribute to your IRA up to the April 15 filing deadline for the tax year. However, you’ll need to file an amended tax return to report these additional IRA contributions and benefit from deductions, if applicable.

Contributions to a Roth IRA aren’t deductible (and you don’t report the contributions on your tax return), but qualified distributions or distributions that are a return of contributions aren’t subject to tax.

Roth IRAs allow you to pay taxes on money going into your account and then all future withdrawals are tax-free. Earnings in a Roth account can be tax-free rather than tax-deferred. So, you can’t deduct contributions to a Roth IRA. However, the withdrawals you make during retirement can be tax-free.

The easy answer is that earnings from a Roth IRA do not count towards income. If you keep the earnings within the account, they definitely are not taxable. Generally, they still do not count as income—unless the withdrawal is considered a non-qualified distribution.

Contributing to a Roth IRA usually won’t affect your income tax refund in the current year, but it could save you lots of money on your taxes in the future, making it particularly useful if you think you’ll pay a higher tax rate in the future.

For 2020 and 2021, there’s a $6,000 limit on taxable contributions to retirement plans. Those aged 50 or over can contribute another $1,000. In the eyes of the IRS, your contribution to a traditional IRA reduces your taxable income by that amount and, thus, reduces the amount you owe in taxes.

Contributions to Roth IRAs are not deductible the year you make them: they consist of after-tax money. That is why you don’t pay taxes on the funds when you withdraw them—your tax bill has already been paid. However, you may be eligible for a tax credit of 10% to 50% on the amount contributed to a Roth IRA.

Consider a Roth conversion Converting some or all of the funds in a Traditional IRA into a Roth IRA is another option. This would mean taking funds from traditional IRAs, paying ordinary income tax on those funds, and rolling them into a Roth IRA.

Provided they meet the specific federal requirements for being allowed to contribute to a Roth, each spouse in a marriage may contribute money toward a Roth IRA in his or her own name. Couples may not both contribute to a single IRA listed with both their names, but rather must maintain their own Roth IRA accounts.