Your 2027 IRMAA Brackets

Our high-end estimate of the 2027 IRMAA brackets begins at a modified adjusted gross income of $113,000 for a single filer and $226,000 for a married couple filing jointly. Below those amounts a beneficiary pays the standard Medicare Part B premium. Above them, the income-related monthly adjustment amount adds IRMAA surcharges to both Medicare Part B and Part D coverage, and the amount climbs through five tiers.

Medicare measures that income from a tax return filed two years earlier, so the 2025 return sets these brackets. The table below pairs each income tier with its Part B surcharge, the total Part B premium using a high-end standard premium estimate of $218.60, and the separate Part D surcharge.

This table is a high-end estimate: thresholds raised by recent inflation and the higher of the two Trustees premium figures. The strict statutory math later on this page points to a first threshold of $112,000 single and $224,000 joint, and the current Trustees estimate of the premium is $209.50. A household close to a line should plan against the lower statutory threshold, since a higher line that does not materialize means crossing it. The Part D surcharges are computed from a base premium CMS has already published, and CMS had not published the rest as of November 8, 2026. For the year already finalized, see the 2026 IRMAA brackets, and for the year before that the 2025 IRMAA brackets.

Every fall, CMS announces two sets of Medicare numbers within a single notice: the standard Part B premium, and the income thresholds that decide who pays a surcharge on top of it. The announcement for 2027 had not been published as of November 8, 2026; last year's arrived on November 14.

It is tempting to treat the two as one problem — take this year's numbers and apply an inflation rate. They behave very differently. The thresholds are set by a formula written into federal law and computable from published data today. The premium is an actuarial decision that no outsider can compute. One can be calculated; the other can only be bounded.

This piece does both, shows the work, and — when CMS publishes the real numbers — we will grade ourselves against them in public.

Section 1839(i)(5) of the Social Security Act indexes each IRMAA threshold to inflation in a very specific way: take the 12-month average of CPI-U ending in August of the preceding year, divide by the 12-month average ending August 2018, apply that growth to fixed statutory base amounts, and round to the nearest $1,000. For those thresholds, the window is September 2025 through August 2026 — and that window has now closed, so the inputs are no longer estimates.

Before trusting a formula, test it. We ran the same computation for every year since indexing resumed: 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, 2025, and 2026. It reproduces the first threshold CMS actually published exactly, all seven years — $87,000, $88,000, $91,000, $97,000, $103,000, $106,000, $109,000 — and all four indexed 2026 tiers exactly.

Run forward a year: the first threshold lands at $112,000 for a single filer and $224,000 for a joint return, up about 2.75% from $109,000 and $218,000. The later tiers project to roughly $141,000–142,000, $176,000–177,000, and $211,000–212,000 for single filers, with joint amounts double.

Two quirks of the computation worth knowing. October 2025's CPI value was never published because of the government shutdown — the first hole in the statutory window since indexing resumed. We computed the average both with the month omitted and interpolated: the first threshold is $112,000 either way, while the next three sit close enough to a rounding line that the choice moves each by $1,000. That is why they appear as ranges. And the top tier — $500,000 single, $750,000 joint — is frozen by statute through 2027 regardless of inflation. It first indexes in 2028.

The Part B premium has no inflation formula. Each September, CMS actuaries project the coming year's per-enrollee program cost, set the premium at roughly a quarter of it, and add a margin to keep the program's reserve near its target. No outside model has the claims data to replicate that. What an outsider can do is use the one published projection with a verifiable record: the Medicare Trustees Report.

The current report estimates next year's standard premium at $209.50 a month — up $6.60, or 3.25%, from 2026's $202.90. The Trustees' year-ahead estimates have been close in every normal year: off by −3.1% for 2023, −0.06% for 2024, exactly right for 2025, and −1.7% for 2026. The one big miss, 2022, was +7.3% — a mid-year shock when CMS added a reserve for a new Alzheimer's drug the projection had explicitly excluded. Note the direction of the recent errors: when they miss, they have missed high.

You may also have seen estimates of $215 or more. Those trace to the previous report's two-year-out figure of $218.60 — and two-year-out numbers are the ones with the bad record, missing by −8% to +4%. The same stale-number problem ran the other way a year ago: the 2024 report's two-year figure had 2026 at $186.90, a near-flat year, right before the actual 9.7% increase. That is why $218.60 appears on this page as the high end of the range, with $209.50 as the Trustees' current estimate.

The table at the top of this page starts the first threshold at $113,000 single and $226,000 joint and puts the standard Part B premium at $218.60. Both numbers have a real logic behind them, and both sit above what the statute and the current Trustees Report point to.

The higher thresholds follow recent inflation. CPI-U rose about 3.4% from August 2025 to August 2026, and adding roughly 3.5% to 3.7% to $109,000 gives about $113,000. The statute works differently: it uses a 12-month average, which rose about 3.1% to 3.3%, and applies it to the unrounded base amount. 2026's first threshold was $108,843 before rounding to $109,000, and the same math for 2027 gives about $112,300 to $112,400. That rounds to $112,000 whether the missing October 2025 reading is omitted or interpolated.

The higher premium is the older Trustees estimate. The 2025 report projected $218.60 for 2027, about 7.7% above 2026's $202.90. The 2026 report lowered that to $209.50. Because no outsider can compute the premium, here is what the difference would mean by tier.

A fair objection: the 2026 premium rose 9.7%, so why believe 3.25% next year? CMS's own rate notice answers it, because the notice publishes the premium's components.

Of the $17.90 increase, about $10.27 was real per-enrollee cost growth — expenditures rose about 5.4%. The other $8.76 was the contingency margin swinging from negative to positive. CMS had over-collected in 2022 for a drug benefit that never materialized, and passed the excess back by running negative margins three years straight — subsidizing the 2023, 2024, and 2025 premiums. In 2026 the excess ran out, the margin flipped to rebuild the reserve, and the subsidized baseline snapped back.

In other words, roughly half of the 9.7% was a one-time event ending, not costs exploding. The rebuild does not repeat, which is exactly why the Trustees' estimate — enough to maintain the reserve rather than grow it — implies a much smaller increase on the same underlying cost trend.

Put the two machines together and the surcharge schedule follows, because the law sets each tier's payment as a fixed multiple of the standard premium. At $209.50, the first-tier surcharge is $83.80 a month and the top tier is $502.80 — on top of the standard premium, per person.

Part D runs on its own arithmetic, and for 2027 the input is already public. The law sets each surcharge as a fixed share of the national base beneficiary premium, which CMS published on July 28, 2026 at $41.33, up the 6% maximum allowed from $38.99. That produces monthly surcharges of $15.40, $39.70, $64.00, $88.30, and $96.40 by tier; the same arithmetic reproduces all five 2026 amounts. They are paid on top of the drug plan's own premium. Combined with Part B at the Trustees' $209.50, the first tier adds $99.20 a month per person, against $95.70 in 2026, and the top tier adds $599.20.

The structural fact advisors should keep in front of clients is that the surcharge is a cliff, not a slope. One dollar of MAGI over the first joint threshold costs a couple an estimated $2,381 for the year in Part B and Part D surcharges combined; one dollar over the fourth costs $13,181. The size of the crossing is irrelevant — onlywhich side of the line the return lands on. Our IRMAA gap analysis shows how far a household sits from the nearest threshold.

And the two growth rates are not symmetric. On the Trustees' own trajectory the premium reaches $338.50 by 2034 — up 67% from 2026, roughly 6.6% a year — while the thresholds crawl at an inflation pace near 2.75%. Treat the out-years as direction, not destination; but the direction is one-way: every tier's dollar penalty grows with the premium, and brackets that grow slower than retirement income pull more households over the line every year.

Medicare does not use taxable income, and it does not use the number on the bottom of a client's tax return. It uses modified adjusted gross income: the adjusted gross income reported on the return, plus tax-exempt interest added back. That single figure decides which of the IRMAA brackets a household lands in, and it is measured from the return filed two years earlier.

The two-year lookback is what makes this a planning problem rather than a billing problem. Income realized this year does not raise a Medicare premium this year — it raises the premium two years from now, long after the decision that caused it. A client who reads an IRMAA determination letter in the fall is reading the consequence of a tax return they filed almost two years earlier — after that year's taxes were long settled.

What lands in that calculation is broader than most retirees expect, and the parts that surprise people are the ones a retirement income plan controls directly.

Our guide to MAGI for Medicare walks the calculation line by line, and what income determines Medicare premiums covers the edge cases that trip up year-end planning.

Because IRMAA surcharges are a cliff rather than a slope, the entire planning question is which side of a line a tax return lands on. Unlike income taxes, where one extra dollar is taxed at a marginal rate, one extra dollar here reprices every month of Medicare coverage for the year. The levers that move modified adjusted gross income are the ordinary ones, applied with an eye on the threshold rather than on the tax bracket.

Size Roth conversions against the threshold, not the tax bracket. Conversions are the most common cause of unexpected IRMAA surcharges, because a conversion that looks efficient against a client's current taxes can cross an income threshold and add four figures of Medicare premiums two years later. Filling a bracket to the top of a tier — and stopping there — captures the tax benefit without the surcharge.

Use qualified charitable distributions for charitably inclined clients over 70½. A QCD satisfies a required minimum withdrawal without ever entering adjusted gross income, while the same gift claimed as a deduction does not reduce MAGI at all. Same gift, same charity, different Medicare premium.

Watch the years before enrollment. Income at 63 sets the premium at 65, so the planning window opens before a client is on Medicare at all — which is exactly when most households are not yet thinking about Medicare premiums. Our guide to reducing MAGI covers the full set of levers.

Appeal when a life-changing event applies. Retirement itself is the most common one: a working year's income sets a Medicare bill that no longer reflects reality once the paycheck stops. Filing Form SSA-44 asks Social Security to use a more recent year, and appealing an IRMAA determination walks the process end to end. A one-time spike such as a home sale does not qualify.

One structural note: enrollees in Medicare Advantage owe the same income-related amounts as those on original Medicare. A $0 plan premium does not remove IRMAA surcharges — they are billed separately, regardless of how the coverage itself is delivered, usually as a deduction from a Social Security check.

Everything on this page rests on published CMS and Social Security sources. The guides below cover the rules, the history, and the planning moves behind each number.

Why does a projection matter when the official numbers are this close? Because of the two-year lookback. The tier a client lands in next year was set by their 2025 return — that is already history. The bracket still open is 2028's, and it will be set by 2026 income, with about seven weeks left in the year.

• Project each client's 2026 MAGI now, against the 2028 thresholds the same formula will produce — not against this year's brackets, which is what most software defaults to.
• Size year-end moves — Roth conversion amounts, gain harvesting — against the nearest threshold, remembering the cliff: the cost of crossing is the same whether the line is missed by one dollar or twenty thousand.
• For charitably inclined clients over 70½, model a qualified charitable distribution against a deducted gift — a QCD reduces MAGI, a below-the-line deduction does not.
• For clients near the frozen $500,000/$750,000 line, note that its first indexing in 2028 creates a small, dated planning window.

None of this is a prescription — it is a projection exercise, and until December 31 there is still timeto run it against the full IRMAA planning process.

Methodology note: thresholds computed under SSA §1839(i)(5) from BLS CPI-U (not seasonally adjusted, U.S. city average), September 2025–August 2026 window, with every month BLS published (October 2025 was never released); recomputed November 8, 2026 and validated against CMS-published thresholds 2020–2026. Premium and out-year trajectory from the 2026 Medicare Trustees Report, intermediate assumptions; surcharges are the statutory multiples of the standard premium. Part D surcharges are the statutory shares of CMS's published 2027 base beneficiary premium of $41.33. 2026 actuals from the CMS premium notice of November 2025. The bracket table at the top is a separate high-end estimate using inflation-adjusted thresholds and the 2025 Trustees Report premium of $218.60. CMS had not published official 2027 Part B amounts as of November 8, 2026, and this page will be graded against them.