Yes. A SEP IRA funded by your self-employment income and a 401(k) at a separate day job don’t share a contribution limit. That’s because a SEP IRA has no employee elective deferral piece at all — the rule that forces you to split one shared limit between two 401(k)s simply doesn’t apply here.
Why a SEP doesn’t compete with your day job’s 401(k)
A 401(k) lets you defer part of your own pay as “employee” contributions, and the IRS caps that deferral per person, aggregated across every 401(k) or 403(b) you participate in. A SEP IRA works differently: it’s entirely an employer-type contribution. There’s no employee salary-deferral election to make, so there’s nothing to aggregate with a 401(k) deferral at another job — confirmed on the IRS FAQs regarding SEPs, which describes the self-employed SEP contribution as based purely on net earnings from self-employment, not on any deferral election.
There’s a second reason the two don’t interact: the overall limit on a retirement plan — the lesser of 100% of compensation or $72,000 for 2026 — applies separately to “all of your accounts in plans maintained by one employer (and any related employer),” per IRS retirement topics on contribution limits. Your day job and your own business are unrelated employers, so each plan gets its own limit rather than sharing one.
How much you can put into each
Your day job’s 401(k) works the way any employee’s does: up to $24,500 in elective deferrals for 2026 (plus catch-up if you’re 50 or older), subject to whatever your employer’s plan actually allows, per the 2026 COLA table. That part is entirely between you and that employer’s plan.
Your SEP IRA is calculated from your net self-employment earnings alone. For a self-employed person, the contribution is limited to the lesser of $72,000 or 100% of compensation for 2026 — but “compensation” for SEP purposes isn’t your raw net profit. It’s net profit minus the deductible half of your self-employment tax, run through a reduced contribution rate (a stated 25% plan rate works out to an effective 20% of that adjusted figure) — not a flat 25% of your top-line profit. Our Self-Employed Retirement Contribution Calculator runs this exact calculation and shows your SEP number next to what a Solo 401(k) would allow for the same income.
A quick example
Say your day job lets you defer $15,000 into its 401(k) this year. Separately, your business nets $40,000 in self-employment profit. Your SEP IRA contribution is based only on that $40,000 — the $15,000 you’re deferring at work has no effect on it. Enter your own net profit into the calculator to see your SEP number; your day job’s 401(k) limit is simply whatever your plan there allows, up to the 2026 statutory maximum.
The one thing that does get complicated
Stacking a SEP IRA and a Solo 401(k) for the same self-employment income — rather than pairing a SEP with an unrelated employer’s 401(k) — is a different question. Both would be plans of the same employer (you), so they don’t get the independent-limit treatment this article describes, and which single plan lets you contribute more for the same income depends on your numbers.
Bottom line
A SEP IRA from self-employment income and a 401(k) at an unrelated day job are about as independent as two retirement accounts can be — no shared deferral limit, no shared overall limit. The only number that matters for your SEP is your own net self-employment earnings.