2026 IRMAA Brackets

In 2026, most Medicare enrollees pay the standard Part B premium of $202.90 per month. If your modified adjusted gross income (MAGI) is above $109,000 as a single filer or $218,000 filing jointly, you pay an Income-Related Monthly Adjustment Amount (IRMAA) on top of that — a surcharge that hits both your Part B and Part D premiums. Your 2026 premiums are keyed to the MAGI on your 2024 tax return, and every threshold is a hard cliff: one dollar over, and you owe the full surcharge for the year.

Data last updated July 10, 2026 · Source: CMS and SSA announcements

2026 IRMAA Brackets: Single & Married Filing Jointly

Find the row that contains your 2024 MAGI. The Part B surcharge is added to the standard premium; the “Total Part B Premium” column does that math for you. The Part D surcharge in the last column is billed separately by Medicare.

A MAGI exactly equal to a listed limit stays in the lower row at every boundary except the last — the top tier starts at exactly the amount shown (“and above” is inclusive).

The Part D surcharge is paid on top of whatever your Part D drug plan itself charges — it goes to Medicare, not your plan — and each enrolled person pays it separately.

2026 IRMAA Brackets: Married Filing Separately

Married filing separately gets no middle tiers. Once your MAGI passes $109,000, the surcharge jumps straight to $446.30 per month for Part B — near the top of the joint table above — with nothing gradual in between.

These tiers apply if you lived with your spouse at any point during the tax year; if you lived apart all year, the Single / HOH thresholds apply instead. A MAGI exactly equal to the first limit stays in the standard-premium row; the top tier starts at exactly the amount shown.

How IRMAA Works

Four things explain almost everything about how this surcharge behaves.

1. It looks back two years

Your 2026 premiums are based on your 2024 MAGI — your adjusted gross income plus tax-exempt interest. Social Security uses the most recent tax return the IRS has on file, which is generally from two years prior. That lag matters: income decisions you make today set the Medicare premiums you'll pay two years from now.

2. It's a cliff, not a slope

Unlike tax brackets, IRMAA has no marginal phase-in. Crossing a threshold by any amount triggers the full surcharge for that tier, on every month of the year.

3. It resets every year

IRMAA is recalculated annually from a fresh lookback return. One high-income year — a large Roth conversion, a big capital gain — raises your premiums for one year, not permanently. Once a lower-income return enters the lookback window, the surcharge drops off on its own.

4. It's charged per person

If both spouses are on Medicare, each one pays the surcharge. A couple over a joint threshold effectively pays double the amounts shown in the tables — once for each spouse's Part B and Part D coverage.

Appealing IRMAA

Because of the two-year lookback, Social Security may be judging you on income you no longer earn. If a life-changing event reduced your income, you can ask them to use a more recent year instead by filing Form SSA-44 (available at ssa.gov/forms). The form recognizes eight qualifying events: work stoppage (retirement), a work reduction (such as dropping to part-time), marriage, divorce or annulment, death of a spouse, loss of income-producing property beyond your control (a disaster or fraud — not a voluntary sale), loss of pension income, and an employer settlement payment.

The most common case is straightforward: you retire, your income falls, but your premiums are still keyed to your final working years. That is exactly what the form exists for. Note that a one-time income spike — like selling investments — is not a qualifying event on its own; the event has to be one of the eight on Form SSA-44.

Managing Your MAGI

Because the thresholds are cliffs, small moves in MAGI can have outsized premium consequences — in both directions. A few levers people commonly model:

• Time your Roth conversions. Conversions add to MAGI in the year you make them. Running a Roth conversion ladder in the years before the two-year lookback window reaches your Medicare enrollment at 65 keeps those conversions from ever touching your premiums.
• Watch your future RMDs. Required minimum distributions are forced income that can push your MAGI over a threshold year after year. The RMD Forecaster projects them for you, and our RMD table reference shows the divisors behind the math.
• Mind the bracket interplay. Income that fills a low federal tax bracket cheaply can still trip an IRMAA cliff — the two systems use different thresholds, and it pays to check both before realizing income.
• Find your own cliff. The IRMAA Optimizer takes your MAGI and shows exactly how close you are to the next threshold and what crossing it would cost.

2025 IRMAA Brackets

For comparison, here are the 2025 brackets. The standard Part B premium was $185.00 per month, based on MAGI from your 2023 tax return.

Single & Married Filing Jointly

A MAGI exactly equal to a listed limit stays in the lower row at every boundary except the last — the top tier starts at exactly the amount shown (“and above” is inclusive).

Married Filing Separately

These tiers apply if you lived with your spouse at any point during the tax year; if you lived apart all year, the Single / HOH thresholds apply instead. A MAGI exactly equal to the first limit stays in the standard-premium row; the top tier starts at exactly the amount shown.

Frequently Asked Questions