Medicare IRMAA Calculator: What Your Income Adds to Your Premiums

01Your IRMAA

IRMAA, the income-related monthly adjustment amount, is an extra charge on Medicare Part B and Part D premiums for people with higher incomes. It is based on your modified adjusted gross income from the tax return two years before: your 2026 premiums use your 2024 return. Enter the two figures from that return.

Yearly surcharge for one person, Part B plus Part D, at each level of modified adjusted gross income, for the year and filing status you chose. Each step is a cliff: one dollar over a line moves you to the next bracket for the whole year.

02The 2026 IRMAA Brackets

Each person on Medicare pays the amount for their own bracket; the standard Part B premium in 2026 is $202.90 a month and the Part B deductible is $283. The Part D surcharge is added on top of whatever your drug plan charges.

Single includes head of household, qualifying surviving spouse and married filing separately for someone who lived apart from their spouse all year. Married people filing separately who lived with their spouse at any time in the year pay $202.90 at $109,000 or less, $649.20 (plus $83.30 for Part D) above that and under $391,000, and $689.90 (plus $91.00) at $391,000 or more. Source: Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services.

2027: projected brackets, based on 2025 income

Projected, not official. CMS normally announces the next year's Part B premium and IRMAA brackets in the fall, in October or November in recent years. The 2027 standard premium of $209.50 is the projection in the 2026 Medicare Trustees Report. The Part D surcharges are calculated from the official 2027 Part D base premium of $41.33 using the formula in the law, so they should match the CMS figures. The income lines are DaveManuel.com's estimates from the inflation formula in the law: the first line, $112,000 single or $224,000 joint, is firm, but the middle three could each come in $1,000 higher, because the October 2025 consumer price index was never published. The joint lines are twice the single ones except at the top, and the $500,000 and $750,000 top lines are fixed in the law through 2027. This table will be replaced with the CMS figures when they are published.

03The One-Dollar Cliff

IRMAA does not phase in with income. A single person with 2024 income of $109,000 pays the standard $202.90 for Part B in 2026; at $109,001 the premium becomes $284.10, and with Part D the surcharge comes to $1,148.40 for the year. For a married couple who are both on Medicare, that one dollar costs $2,296.80. Each later line is another cliff of the same kind, and at the top the surcharge is $6,936.00 a year per person.

That makes the brackets worth knowing in the years that count. The income that sets your premiums is two years back, so planning starts at 63: income in the year you turn 63 can raise your premiums at 65.

04How IRMAA Works

The income measure. Modified adjusted gross income for IRMAA is your adjusted gross income plus tax-exempt interest, such as municipal bond interest, plus a few rarer exclusions: foreign earned income and housing, income from Puerto Rico and some other US territories, and savings bond interest used for education. Withdrawals from a traditional IRA or 401(k), Roth conversions, capital gains, the taxable part of Social Security and RMDs all count, because they are in AGI. Qualified Roth withdrawals and qualified charitable distributions do not.

Who decides. The Social Security Administration sets your bracket each year from IRS data, and sends a notice. If the IRS does not have your return from two years back, Social Security uses the year before that, then corrects it once the newer return comes in.

Per person. The surcharge is charged to each person enrolled. Couples filing jointly use the joint income lines, which are twice the single ones except at the top ($750,000 against $500,000), and each spouse on Medicare pays the full amount for the bracket.

Part D goes to Medicare, not your plan. The Part D surcharge applies to stand-alone drug plans, Medicare Advantage plans with drug coverage and employer group Part D plans. It does not apply to employer or union drug coverage that is not a Medicare Part D plan. It is deducted from Social Security benefits even if you pay your plan premium another way, or billed by Medicare. Not paying it can get you removed from your drug plan.

No hold-harmless. When the standard premium rises by more than a retiree's Social Security cost-of-living increase, most people are protected from a net cut in their check. People who pay IRMAA are not covered by that protection.

05If Your Income Has Dropped

Because the income is two years old, it often does not match a new retiree's situation. Social Security will use a more recent year if your income fell because of one of these life-changing events, which you report on form SSA-44 with proof:

A one-time capital gain, a large Roth conversion or a home sale is not a life-changing event. If you amended that year's tax return, send Social Security a copy of the amended return and the IRS letter acknowledging it. If you think the IRS figure itself is wrong, have the IRS correct it, then send Social Security proof of the correction. To dispute a decision otherwise, ask Social Security for a reconsideration.

06Ways People Keep Under a Line

Qualified charitable distributions. From age 70½, giving straight from an IRA to charity stays out of AGI, so it does not count for IRMAA, and once required minimum distributions begin it counts toward them. The RMD Calculator shows how large those distributions will get.

Timing Roth conversions. Converting before the year you turn 63 keeps the income out of the years that set Medicare premiums. Later, converting just up to the top of a bracket rather than past it avoids paying the next cliff for a small amount of extra income.

Spreading out one-time income. Selling an investment or taking a large IRA withdrawal across two tax years can keep both years under a line, where one sale would put one year well over it.

Watching tax-exempt interest. Municipal bond interest is free of federal income tax but still counts toward IRMAA income.

Whether any of these makes sense depends on the rest of your taxes; a one-year surcharge can be cheaper than the alternative.

07IRMAA Since 2007

Standard Part B premium and the premium in the highest income bracket, per person per month. Source: CMS premium notices and fact sheets.

The surcharge began in 2007 under the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003, phased in over three years, and was extended to Part D in 2011 by the Affordable Care Act, which also froze the income lines at their 2010 levels. A 2015 law ended the freeze after 2017 and tightened the upper brackets for 2018, pulling the top bracket for single filers down from incomes above $214,000 to those above $160,000. A sixth, higher bracket for incomes of $500,000 or more ($750,000 for couples) was added in 2019 by the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018, and from 2020 the lower lines have risen with inflation each year. The $500,000 and $750,000 lines start rising with inflation in 2028.

08How the Calculator Works

Modified adjusted gross income here is the AGI and tax-exempt interest you enter; if you had foreign earned income, territory income or excluded education savings bond interest, add it to the AGI figure. The calculator places that income in the CMS bracket for the premium year and filing status, using the official boundaries: income exactly on a line stays in the lower bracket, except the top line, where the amount on the line is in the top bracket. Yearly figures are twelve months of the monthly amount for each person. The Part D surcharge is the amount Medicare adds to any drug plan premium; the plan premium itself varies. People with Part B coverage only for immunosuppressive drugs have a different, lower schedule. This is a guide, not tax advice: your Social Security notice gives your official bracket, and nothing you enter leaves your browser.

09Questions People Ask

10Sources

• CMS: 2026 Medicare Parts B Premiums and Deductibles
• CMS: Medicare Part D 2027 National Average Monthly Bid Amount Information (July 28, 2026)
• 2026 Medicare Trustees Report
• CMS fact sheets and Federal Register notices on Part B premiums for earlier years, and CMS Part D income-related adjustment tables
• Social Security POMS HI 01101.020: IRMAA sliding scale tables
• Social Security: Medicare premiums, rules for higher-income beneficiaries
• Social Security Act, section 1839(i)
• 20 CFR Part 418, Subpart B: Medicare Part B income-related monthly adjustment amount
• Form SSA-44: Medicare income-related monthly adjustment amount, life-changing event

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