You already maxed a 401(k). What 2026 still leaves

September 13, 2026, is a useful day to be told you have maxed the 401(k). The elective deferral limit is $24,500. If that amount has already been withheld, payroll is done with the basic deferral for the year. It is not done with retirement plans. Two other statutory ceilings are still in the conversation, and neither one is a larger version of the deferral. Defined contribution annual additions can be as high as $72,000. A defined benefit plan can promise an annual benefit as high as $290,000. The first of those is a contribution ceiling. The second is a benefit ceiling. The cash balance deposit people quote under that benefit is illustrative. There is no flat IRS cash-balance contribution cap. If the only number anyone has put in front of you since you hit $24,500 is a backdoor Roth of $7,500, the middle of the system has been skipped.

Sterling Pension Group LLC in West Hartford is a third-party administrator. We are not an actuarial firm. Independent Enrolled Actuaries certify the valuation that turns a benefit into a deposit. This briefing is not tax, legal, or actuarial advice. It is a map of what 2026 still leaves after the deferral is gone, written so the three ceilings stay in their lanes.

The three ceilings, and the catch-up that sits beside them

The figures were published in IRS news release IR-2025-111 on November 13, 2025, with the adjustments in Notice 2025-67. The IRS collects them on its cost-of-living adjustments page. Publication 560 is the small-business booklet that explains which ceiling belongs to which plan. The limits page on this site is the short version. Nothing in those sources adds the three numbers together into a single "maximum contribution."

The first ceiling is the elective deferral under section 402(g). For 2026 it is $24,500. It applies to the employee, across 401(k), 403(b), and similar deferral plans combined. It is the number you have already hit. Catch-up contributions, for a participant who is age 50 or older by year-end, are additional. The ordinary catch-up is $8,000. A participant who is age 60, 61, 62, or 63 may instead contribute a catch-up of $11,250. The higher figure replaces the $8,000. It is not stacked on top of it. Catch-up contributions generally do not count against the $72,000 annual-additions limit. They still have to be elected through payroll. If you are 50 or older and the $24,500 is in but the catch-up is not, you may not be maxed. Ask the recordkeeper before you accept the label.

Roth catch-up is operational in 2026. If your FICA wages from this employer in 2025 exceeded $150,000, the catch-up generally has to be designated Roth rather than pre-tax. The rule applies to the 401(k) catch-up. It does not apply to cash balance pay credits. Final regulations are stricter in 2027. This year the standard to ask about is good-faith operational compliance. Ask the 401(k) recordkeeper whether your payroll is set that way. Do not ask the pension formula to solve it.

The second ceiling is annual additions under section 415(c). For 2026 it is $72,000. It counts elective deferrals other than catch-up, plus employer profit sharing, plus forfeitures allocated to you, plus certain other additions. If you deferred $24,500 and nothing else has gone in, the remaining additions room is generally $47,500 before catch-up. That room is not a check the employer must write. The plan document has to allow a profit-sharing or match formula. The deduction limits have to allow it. The nondiscrimination tests have to pass, which is where staff enter. Compensation the formula can use is capped at $360,000. A profit-sharing allocation of $47,500 on a wage the plan can see is a defined contribution answer. It is still inside the second ceiling. It does not touch the third.

The third ceiling is the defined benefit limit under section 415(b). For 2026 it is an annual benefit of $290,000, payable as a straight life annuity at a retirement age the statute respects, and limited as well to 100 percent of average compensation. Early payment and short service reduce it. The IRS explains that shape on its defined benefit benefit-limits page. $290,000 is not a deposit. A cash balance plan is one kind of defined benefit plan. The employer contribution is whatever an independent Enrolled Actuary determines must be funded for the benefit the document actually promises. Age, the interest crediting rate, the retirement age, compensation history, assets already in the trust, and the staff census all move the deposit. A number you have seen for "someone my age" was illustrative. It was not a third IRS cap sitting above $72,000.

A personal IRA is a fourth arrangement, and it is easy to mistake for leftover room. The 2026 IRA limit is $7,500, with a catch-up of $1,100 at age 50 or older. A backdoor Roth uses that limit. It does not use the $47,500 of additions room, and it does not use the defined benefit ceiling. The briefing on why a backdoor Roth is not a pension keeps those dollars apart.

What the second ceiling still leaves inside the 401(k)

If the plan is a deferral-only 401(k), hitting $24,500 really is the end of that plan for the year, aside from catch-up. Many professional-practice plans are not deferral-only. They allow a profit-sharing contribution. Whether you should receive one is a testing and deduction question, not a feeling that room under $72,000 is money left on the table.

In a plan with employees, a profit-sharing contribution for the owner often requires a contribution for staff. The shape may be a uniform percentage, a permitted disparity allocation, or a cross-tested design with a gateway. The gateway, where it applies, is a feature of the regulations and of your document. It is not a flat tax published next to $24,500. The staff cost page is the dollar version. The compensation cap does not cap that dollar. Employees paid under $360,000, which is almost all of them, are counted at their actual pay.

If a cash balance plan will exist beside the 401(k), the deduction rules coordinate the two employer contributions. Elective deferrals are generally outside the combined-plan percentage. Employer profit sharing is not free on top of a large pension deduction. An exception often lets a defined contribution employer contribution of up to 6 percent of compensation be deducted alongside the pension contribution. Six percent of the $360,000 cap is $21,600. Designs that are trying to preserve the pension deduction often stop the profit-sharing piece near that figure rather than filling the entire $47,500. Filling the entire additions room and also taking a maximum pension deduction is the combination that blows up the coordination rule. Your CPA applies section 404. The actuary applies the funding rules. The combo page is the structure. It is not a permission slip to add $72,000 to an illustrative pension deposit and call the sum a limit.

Catch-up remains available on top of that conversation if you are 50 or older and the wages still exist to defer. It is not profit sharing. It is not a pay credit. If Roth catch-up applies, the $8,000 or $11,250 is after-tax inside the Roth account, and the deduction you feel is smaller than the deposit. That is the rule operating correctly, not a payroll error.

An age table that is not a limit

The deposit that funds a cash balance benefit rises with age, because an older participant has fewer years to fund a benefit and a larger lump-sum equivalent of the $290,000 annuity. The table below is a teaching sketch of that slope. Every band is illustrative. These are not IRS figures, not Sterling results, and not amounts any owner should wire. They assume compensation high enough to support the benefit, including current pay at the $360,000 cap and a high three-year average that can carry the annuity limit. They assume a fixed interest credit in a common market-rate range, a retirement age near 62, no meaningful prior accrual, and no employees. Add a staff census, a lower wage, a different credit, or years already accrued toward the $290,000 limit, and the band moves or disappears. An independent Enrolled Actuary replaces the entire table for a real plan.

Age 35. The illustrative annual deposit often discussed in a maximum-style design sits roughly in a band of $90,000 to $130,000. The owner is far from retirement. The same annuity limit has many years of interest credits to help, so the deposit the benefit can support is closer to a large defined contribution plan than to the amounts people quote at seminars.

Age 40. The illustrative band moves to roughly $120,000 to $170,000. This is the first age at which many owners notice the pension is no longer a rounding error above the $72,000 additions cap. It is still not a published maximum.

Age 45. The illustrative band moves to roughly $160,000 to $220,000. A 401(k) that is already at $24,500, plus profit sharing, is no longer the whole story if the wage and the census support a defined benefit formula. It is also the age at which a one-year illustration, unsupported by a willingness to fund several years, starts to do real damage.

Age 50. The illustrative band moves to roughly $200,000 to $280,000. Catch-up deferrals of $8,000 may now sit beside the plan. They do not increase the cash balance credit. They are a payroll election on the 401(k) side.

Age 55. The illustrative band moves to roughly $250,000 to $340,000. This is the decade in which the funding compression is obvious. It is also the decade in which owners most often mistake the band for a cap they are "entitled" to. They are entitled to a benefit the statute allows, funded under the funding rules, if the document and the tests say so. They are not entitled to the top of a teaching sketch.

Age 60. The illustrative band moves to roughly $300,000 to $400,000. The catch-up on the 401(k), if the participant is 60 through 63, is $11,250 rather than $8,000. That catch-up still does not enter the cash balance formula. Roth treatment of the catch-up, when 2025 FICA wages exceeded $150,000, is still a recordkeeper question.

Ages 62 to 65. The illustrative band often remains in the high $300,000s and can sit higher for a year or two as the annuity starting date approaches. It does not climb forever. Once the accrued benefit is already near the $290,000 dollar limit, later deposits shrink, because there is less benefit left to fund. An owner who waited until 64 to start, and who lacks the compensation history or the years of participation the statute requires, may not see the top of the band at all. The limit is a benefit limit. Service and pay are part of the benefit.

Read the table as a slope. A 40-year-old and a 60-year-old with the same W-2 do not have the same illustrative deposit, and an equal-dollar design is often the wrong partnership answer. The two-owner briefing is that conversation. The illustrations page is where a single-year sketch should stay labeled. If a proposal shows one dollar and does not show staff cost, it is not finished, however closely the dollar matches a row above.

What still has to be true this month

The wage has to be real. An S corporation distribution is not compensation. A bonus that will not actually run through payroll will not support a benefit. If the year is softer than the spring forecast, the illustrative credit should be reset before the formula hardens. The halfway briefing was the July version. September is late for a first conversation and still early enough to refuse a stale maximum.

The firm has to be able to repeat the deposit. A cash balance plan is a several-year funding promise. Minimum funding for a 2026 calendar-year accrual will generally be due September 15, 2027. The deduction often follows the 2026 return, including extensions, which is a different clock and may fall on a nearby day. For practices that already have a plan, the 2025 minimum was generally due September 15, 2026, which is two days from now. If that wire has not gone, it outranks any 2026 illustration. The calendar is the list. The September window briefing is why a brand-new design still has to start with a census rather than with this table.

Employees have to be on the illustration. The bands above assumed none. Your firm may not match the assumption. A SEP that is still open may forbid the qualified plan, and a SEP contribution up to the $72,000 additions ceiling does not stack freely on the pension. Coordination is required. PBGC coverage, if you adopt a defined benefit plan, is plan-specific. Many small professional-service plans are exempt. Not all. The PBGC coverage page is the reference before anyone calls the plan a private retirement account.

The calculator will not reproduce the age table, and it should not. A calculator without your census is a prompt. The defined benefit and cash balance pages describe the promise. The comparison with a SEP and a 401(k) is the right chart if the bands above are larger than anything you are willing to fund more than once. In that case what 2026 still leaves may simply be the rest of the $72,000, the catch-up if you have not used it, and an IRA of $7,500. That is a complete answer for many owners. It is an incomplete answer for an older owner with a high wage, a stable practice, and staff cost that has been stated in dollars rather than wished away.

What to do in the next two weeks

Write down which ceilings you have actually used. The $24,500 deferral, yes or no. The catch-up, and whether it is Roth because 2025 FICA wages exceeded $150,000. Any employer profit sharing already deposited against the $72,000 additions limit. Any SEP still in force. Any defined benefit plan already adopted.

If all of that is only the deferral, ask for two illustrative pictures and label them illustrative before you see them. One fills remaining defined contribution room and stops. The other adds a cash balance credit at your age, with staff cost in dollars beside it, at a contribution you could pay again next year. Refuse any picture that adds $24,500, $72,000, and $290,000 into one deposit. Those numbers are not the same kind of limit, and the last of them is not a deposit at all.

Then bring the census, not the age band. The band is a slope. The census is the year. What 2026 still leaves is whatever those facts can support, certified later by an independent Enrolled Actuary if a pension is actually adopted, and left alone if they cannot.