Spouse worked one month - can I contribute for her in IRA?

[nitingautam]

Hi Tax Team -

my spouse worked one month for a School as teacher and paid taxes for that month after that she was unemployed - Can I fill for her Traditional IRA? as when I try in TurboTax it errored on AGI saying You were covered with employer provided plan but that was for one month only.

[BillM223]

Did TurboTax say that you/she could not contribute to her IRA, or did it say that the contribution would not be deductible?

[nitingautam]

Could not be deductible

[BillM223]

Pub 590a (page 12) says, "the deduction you can take for contributions made to your traditional IRA depends on whether you or your spouse was covered for any part of the year by an employer retirement plan".

I suspect that your spouse had an employer retirement plan, even for the one month, and this led to her not being able to deduct the contribution.

[Opus 17]

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@nitingautam wrote:

Could not be deductible

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In general, you can use the spousal IRA rule to contribute to a spouse's IRA even if the spouse didn't work, as long as you have enough compensation from working to cover both IRA contributions.

However, depending on your income and your work retirement benefits, your ability to make deductible contributions to your own or a spouse's IRA may be limited.

https://www.irs.gov/retirement-plans/ira-deduction-limits

You can may be able to make a non-deductible contribution to a Roth IRA instead.  Or, you can make non-deductible contributions to a traditional pre-tax IRA, but that creates a complicated situation that will follow you for the rest of your life.  We can discuss those options if you want to.