dmertz
Level 15

Retirement tax questions

The chart you looked at is for determining whether a permissible IRA contribution is deductible or not.  It seems that you are instead limited on how much you are eligible to contribute.  Do you have sufficient net earnings from self-employment to support the IRA contributions?  Net earnings are your net profit from self-employment minus the deductible portion of self-employment taxes.  If the sum of the IRA contributions for you and your spouse exceed net earnings, one or both of you indeed have an excess contribution.