Editorial Policy

Who writes this content

Every guide on this site is written and maintained by Mark Annese, an IRMAA Certified Planner whose work centers on the intersection of Medicare costs, Social Security timing, and retirement tax strategy. Articles carry a named byline, a publication date, and a last-updated date. We do not publish anonymous or ghostwritten content, and we do not publish sponsored articles.

Where the numbers come from

Premiums, brackets, thresholds, deductibles, and surcharge amounts are taken from the agency that sets them, not from secondary coverage of it. In practice that means:

• Medicare premiums, deductibles, and IRMAA amounts — the annual Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services fact sheet, published each November for the following year.
• How tiers are assigned, appealed, and recalculated — the Social Security Administration and Form SSA-44.
• Tax treatment, income definitions, and limits — the Internal Revenue Service.
• Cost-of-living and benefit figures — SSA announcements and the annual Medicare Trustees Report.

Pages that rest on a specific document list it in a Sources section, linked directly to the agency, so any figure can be checked without leaving the article.

How figures are verified

Before a bracket page is published or refreshed, each row of each table is checked line by line against the primary source rather than against last year’s version of our own page. Where a page states a year-over-year change, both years are checked. Projections — figures published before the agency has released final numbers — are labeled as projections, kept on a separate page from the final tables, and replaced once the agency publishes.

When pages are updated

CMS publishes the following year’s Medicare figures in mid-November, and SSA announces the cost-of-living adjustment in October. Bracket, premium, and threshold pages are reviewed and updated on that calendar, and the last-updated date on the page is changed only when the content itself changed. Pages describing rules rather than amounts are reviewed at least annually.

Corrections

If a figure or statement on this site is wrong, we want to fix it. Email sales@retirementadvisorpro.com with the page URL and the correction. Substantive corrections to a published figure are made to the page and reflected in its last-updated date.

Independence and commercial interest

RetirementAdvisorPro sells retirement-planning software to financial advisors, and our guides link to that software. No agency, carrier, custodian, or third party pays for coverage, placement, or a particular conclusion, and no article is written or revised at an advertiser’s direction. Where our content names a figure the software also calculates, the figure still comes from the government source. See our full disclosures for what this content is and is not.

Use of AI

AI tools may assist with drafting, editing, and formatting. Every published figure, claim, and citation is verified by a human against the primary source before it goes live, and Mark is responsible for the final content of every page.