Projected 2028 IRMAA brackets

What will the 2028 IRMAA brackets be?

Scenarios computed from 42 U.S.C. 1395r(i)(5); 20 CFR 418.1105 (tiers 1-4); 20 CFR 418.1115 (top-tier ranges) and BLS series CUUR0000SA0 (CPI-U, U.S. city average, not seasonally adjusted), latest print July 2026 = 333.918. The two columns are labeled scenarios, not a range: inflation above roughly 3% per year would push every threshold past the moderate column. Final figures come from CMS in fall 2027. *Joint = 150% of the adjusted single amount per statute; whether CMS re-rounds the joint figure to the nearest $1,000 is unresolved (e.g. $760,500 vs $760,000).

The floor column is arithmetic, not a forecast. If prices froze at the last published CPI print, a single filer would cross into the first 2028 surcharge tier above $114,000 of 2026 MAGI, the second above $143,000, the third above $179,000, and the fourth above $214,000. Those figures cannot end up lower unless prices actually fall between now and August 2027. The moderate column shows the same thresholds under a steady 3% inflation illustration. These thresholds are also the 2028 MAGI limits for Medicare premiums: cross one and both your Part B and Part D surcharges step up.

The contrast with our 2027 bracket projections matters. That page publishes narrowed ranges because ten of its eleven usable CPI months are already printed. Here, the determination window has not even opened. Treat every 2028 number as a scenario endpoint that moves with each monthly print.

No tool can price a 2028 premium today. What the IRMAA calculator can do is read your MAGI against the current table and show the headroom left under each threshold, which is the number 2026 planning actually turns on.

Are the 2028 IRMAA brackets based on 2026 income?

Yes. Medicare's two-year lookback means the 2028 brackets read the 2026 tax return you will file in early 2027. SSA generally uses that return, and when it arrives late, SSA works temporarily from the filing three years back, your 2025 return, until the newer one shows up.

That timing makes 2026 the only IRMAA year still open. The 2025 income that sets 2027 premiums is already on file, and 2024 income settled 2026. Income you realize through December 31, 2026 is the last input anyone can still change: a Roth conversion, a large capital gain, or a first required minimum distribution taken this fall flows into the 2026 return, and the 2026 return, not next year's, determines your 2028 premiums. We explain the mechanics and compute the numbers; what to do about them is your call. The year-end levers are covered in the guide to reducing MAGI ahead of the lookback, and the conversion arithmetic in how a Roth conversion feeds IRMAA.

For IRMAA, MAGI is adjusted gross income plus tax-exempt interest. The MAGI for IRMAA guide lists exactly what counts on the 2026 return and what does not.

What are the projected 2028 IRMAA brackets for married filing jointly?

Under the floor scenario, the four lower joint thresholds come out at $228,000, $286,000, $358,000, and $428,000 of 2026 MAGI. The moderate scenario lifts them to $232,000, $292,000, $364,000, and $436,000.

Medicare bills the surcharge to each enrollee separately. A couple with both spouses enrolled pays it twice, two premiums set by one joint return, so a threshold crossing shows up on two notices at once.

Every joint threshold in the table is exactly double its single counterpart except the top one, which the statute sets at 150% of the single amount. That asymmetry has been invisible while both figures sat frozen. The first adjustment in 2028 exposes it: 150% of the projected single figure gives $760,500 on the floor numbers, which is not a clean multiple of $1,000, and whether CMS re-rounds it is one of the genuinely open questions covered below.

Married filing separately runs on a harsher schedule that skips the middle tiers for separate filers who shared a household at any point in the year; see the married filing separately guide. Its breakpoints derive from two numbers in the table above, the first threshold and the top one. That identity matches every published year we have checked, but it is a derived pattern rather than parsed statute, so we describe the mechanics and hold the 2028 dollar figures until CMS publishes.

Does the $500,000 IRMAA tier finally change in 2028?

Yes, for the first time since it was created. The Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 added the $500,000 / $750,000 tier starting in 2019 and froze it on purpose: while the other four thresholds rose with CPI, from $85,000 to a projected $112,000 for tier 1, the top line held still through nine premium years, 2019 through 2027, quietly pulling more people into the top tier as inflation eroded it. 2028 ends the freeze.

The top tier follows its own formula, separate from tiers 1 through 4: 500000 x avg(Sep 2026 - Aug 2027) / avg(Sep 2025 - Aug 2026), rounded to nearest $1,000, never below 500000. The statute's "(if any)" clause means the figure can rise or hold, never drop below $500,000. Tiers 1 through 4 carry no such floor.

Because the base period is the 12 months ending August 2026, its denominator is already ten twelfths measurable today, and it contains a permanent hole. The October 2025 CPI was never published, and that missing month sits inside the top tier's base period forever, so SSA's still-unannounced handling of the gap will echo through every future year's top tier. For tiers 1 through 4 the missing print is irrelevant; their window lies entirely ahead of it. Keeping those two facts separate is what makes the top-tier math tractable at all.

Computed both ways, skipping the missing month or substituting the estimate one widely cited tracker attributes to a Treasury bond calculation, the floor answer is identical: $507,000 single. It is the one figure on this page that is stable across every assumption we can vary today. The moderate scenario lands at $516,000 or $517,000 depending on that same treatment. The joint figure multiplies the adjusted single amount by 150%, giving $760,500 under the floor scenario, and there the statute goes quiet: its rounding clause names the single amount and says nothing about the 150% step, so nobody can yet say whether CMS prints $760,500 or rounds it. We flag that every time the joint figure appears.

Most 2028 projections you will find elsewhere apply a flat 2% to 2.5% to last year's rounded thresholds. That method misses the statutory formula and misses the unfreezing with it; at least one such page states that the top tier does not adjust, which is false for 2028.

How are these 2028 projections computed?

Everything above is arithmetic you can redo yourself. The controlling law is 42 U.S.C. 1395r(i)(5); 20 CFR 418.1105 (tiers 1-4); 20 CFR 418.1115 (top-tier ranges). For tiers 1 through 4, start from the four 2019 base amounts, $85,000 / $107,000 / $133,500 / $160,000 single, multiply by how far the 12-month CPI-U average ending August 2027 has risen over the statute's base figure of 249.2802, round to the nearest $1,000, and double for joint filers.

The 2028 determination window runs Sep 2026 - Aug 2027. 0 of its 12 monthly values have been published; the newest CPI print anywhere is July 2026 at 333.918. So instead of one disguised prediction we publish two labeled assumptions. The floor holds that July print flat through all 12 window months: it is what the thresholds become if inflation is literally zero from here, and only outright deflation could produce lower tier 1 through 4 numbers. The moderate scenario compounds prices up a quarter percent per month, about 3% a year, as an illustration and nothing more. Hotter inflation than that lands the real thresholds above the moderate column.

Top tier computed on its own base period (12 months ending August 2026). Moderate-row spread: 516,000 skipping Oct 2025 in the base; 517,000 using the 325.604 estimate, the two treatments of the October 2025 print that BLS never released.

The engine has a track record: fed the CPI window that produced the 2026 brackets, the identical tier 1 through 4 formula returns CMS's published figures of $109,000 / $137,000 / $171,000 / $205,000 to the dollar. It is the same method behind our 2027 page, applied here a year further out with none of the data in hand yet.

What will the 2028 Part B premium and Part D surcharges be?

Unknowable, and this page will not pretend otherwise. Two inputs do not exist yet: the standard Part B premium rests on cost projections CMS will not finalize until fall 2027, and the Part D surcharge is built from insurer bids due in mid-2027. Any 2028 premium dollar published today stacks one extrapolation on another. We print no 2028 premium or Part D dollar amounts, anywhere on this site.

What can be said is structural. Both surcharges hang on one set of MAGI tiers, so every threshold scenario above governs Part B and Part D alike once CMS attaches dollars to them, and higher tiers will keep paying a larger share of program costs, as they do under the 2026 brackets.

When will the official 2028 IRMAA brackets be released?

Fall 2027. The regulation targets September publication; recent practice is November. CMS published the 2026 set on November 14, 2025 and the 2025 set on November 8, 2024. Certainty builds on a schedule before then:

Once CMS announces the 2027 brackets this fall, the 2027 projection page will set our numbers beside the announced ones, threshold by threshold. This page runs the same method with a year longer runway, so that public scorecard doubles as this one's track record.

Update log

The log moves only when the numbers do. Between CPI prints nothing here changes, so monthly is the honest cadence and we do not manufacture updates between releases.

• August 19, 2026: Page launched with 0 of the 12 window prints published. Both scenarios computed from the July 2026 CPI print (333.918); floor first tier $114,000 single, floor top tier $507,000 single under both base-period treatments.

Data status: the Sep 2026 - Aug 2027 window is still empty; all 12 of its monthly values remain unpublished. The first update lands with the September 2026 CPI, due mid-October 2026 (we confirm the exact day against the BLS release schedule). A month before that, the August 2026 print locks the top tier's base period, in mid-September 2026. After the window opens, we recompute after each monthly print through mid-September 2027, then publish the final tables inside a day of the CMS announcement in fall 2027.

Today's final table: the 2026 IRMAA brackets. The nearer-term outlook, with most of its data already in hand: the projected 2027 brackets.