If your income crosses certain lines, Medicare charges you more for the exact same coverage everyone else gets. That extra charge is called IRMAA, and in 2026 it can add anywhere from $95 to $578 per month, per person. Use the IRMAA calculator below to see where you land, then keep reading for the full 2026 brackets and smart ways to shrink the bill.
IRMAA Surcharge Calculator
Estimate your 2026 Medicare Part B and Part D IRMAA surcharge based on 2024 MAGI.
This calculator is for educational purposes only. Your official IRMAA determination comes from Social Security.
What is IRMAA, exactly?
IRMAA stands for Income-Related Monthly Adjustment Amount. That is a mouthful of government-speak, so here it is in plain English: IRMAA is a surcharge added to your Medicare premiums if your income is above a set threshold.
It applies to two parts of Medicare. Part B covers doctor visits and outpatient care. Part D covers prescription drugs. If you owe IRMAA, you pay an extra amount on both, and you pay it for each person on Medicare in your household.
Here is some comfort before we go further. Most people never pay IRMAA. Fewer than 1 in 10 Medicare beneficiaries owe it in any given year. But the people who do owe it are often surprised, because of one strange feature in how the government calculates it. Let’s cover that next.
How does the 2026 IRMAA calculator figure out what you owe?
The calculator above does the same math the Social Security Administration does, and the math has a twist: your 2026 IRMAA is based on your income from 2024.
That’s right. Two years ago. Social Security uses your modified adjusted gross income, or MAGI, from the most recent tax return the IRS has on file. For 2026, that means your 2024 return, the one you filed in early 2025.
MAGI for IRMAA purposes is your adjusted gross income plus any tax-exempt interest, like the interest from municipal bonds. It includes the taxable portion of your Social Security benefits, but not the untaxed portion.
This two-year lookback is where the surprises come from. Say Frank retired in late 2024 after one final, high-earning year. He’s living on a modest income now. But in 2026, Medicare bills him as if he were still pulling down his old salary, because 2024 is the year on file. (There’s an appeal for exactly this situation. More on that below.)
What are the 2026 IRMAA brackets?
The standard Part B premium in 2026 is $202.90 per month. If your 2024 MAGI was at or below $109,000 as a single filer, or $218,000 filing jointly, that is all you pay. Not a penny of IRMAA.
Above those lines, the surcharges kick in. Here are the official 2026 Part B amounts:
| 2024 MAGI (Single) | 2024 MAGI (Married Filing Jointly) | Monthly Part B Premium | IRMAA Added |
|---|---|---|---|
| $109,000 or less | $218,000 or less | $202.90 | $0 |
| $109,001 to $137,000 | $218,001 to $274,000 | $284.10 | $81.20 |
| $137,001 to $171,000 | $274,001 to $342,000 | $405.80 | $202.90 |
| $171,001 to $205,000 | $342,001 to $410,000 | $527.50 | $324.60 |
| $205,001 to under $500,000 | $410,001 to under $750,000 | $649.20 | $446.30 |
| $500,000 and up | $750,000 and up | $689.90 | $487.00 |
Notice how steep the jumps are. The top bracket pays $689.90 a month for the same Part B coverage that costs your neighbor $202.90.
Don’t forget the Part D surcharge
IRMAA also hits your prescription drug coverage, and it uses the same income brackets. The Part D surcharge gets added on top of whatever your drug plan already charges, and you pay it directly to Medicare, not to your plan.
Here are the 2026 Part D IRMAA amounts per person, per month: $14.50 in the first bracket, $37.50 in the second, $60.40 in the third, $83.30 in the fourth, and $91.00 at the top.
So a married couple in the first IRMAA bracket pays an extra $95.70 each ($81.20 for Part B plus $14.50 for Part D). That is $191.40 per month for the household, or about $2,296 per year. And that’s the smallest IRMAA bill you can get.
One more wrinkle: this applies even if you’re in a Medicare Advantage plan with drug coverage. There is no IRMAA escape hatch through Advantage plans.
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A warning for married couples who file separately
If you’re married, lived with your spouse at any point during the year, and file separate returns, the brackets collapse on you. There is no gentle first tier. One penny over $109,000 in MAGI and you jump straight to a Part B premium of $649.20 plus an $83.30 Part D surcharge.
Compare that to a single filer with the same income, who pays $95.70 a month in surcharges. The separate filer pays roughly $529.60. Same income, more than five times the IRMAA. If you’re considering filing separately for other reasons, run this math first, ideally with a tax professional.
Why one extra dollar can cost you over $1,000
Here is the part that makes IRMAA different from almost everything else in the tax code. Income taxes work on a sliding scale. Earn one more dollar, pay a few more cents. IRMAA doesn’t work that way. It works like a cliff.
Say Tom and Carol, both 68 and both on Medicare, have a 2024 MAGI of $217,900. They pay zero IRMAA in 2026. Now say they had sold a few extra shares of stock that year and landed at $218,200 instead. Just $300 more.
That $300 pushes them into the first bracket. Each of them now owes $95.70 a month in surcharges. Over a full year, that’s $2,296 as a couple. Three hundred dollars of income triggered nearly $2,300 in extra Medicare premiums.
This is why the calculator at the top of this page matters. Knowing exactly where the cliff edges sit, before you make income decisions, is worth real money.
What kinds of income push you over an IRMAA cliff?
People rarely sail past an IRMAA threshold because of their paycheck. It’s usually a one-time event that does it. The most common culprits:
Roth conversions. Converting money from a traditional IRA to a Roth counts as income in the year you convert. A big conversion at 64 can trigger IRMAA at 66.
Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs). Once RMDs begin at age 73, those forced withdrawals stack on top of everything else you earn.
Selling a home or a big capital gain. The taxable gain from selling property, a business, or appreciated stock all flows into MAGI.
A final year of work. Retiring mid-career-peak means your highest earning year follows you onto Medicare two years later, although retirement is generally considered an appealable event. If you’re successful you may be able to use your current year’s estimated income.
Municipal bond interest. It’s free of federal income tax, but it counts for IRMAA. This one catches a lot of careful savers off guard.
None of these are bad moves on their own. The problem is making them blind, without seeing the Medicare bill that arrives two years down the road.
How do I avoid or lower IRMAA in 2026?
You can’t negotiate with the brackets, but you can manage what shows up in your MAGI. A few proven approaches:
Time your Roth conversions. The sweet spot is often the gap years between retirement and age 63, before the two-year lookback starts affecting your Medicare premiums. If you convert after that, size each conversion to stay under the next bracket line.
Use Qualified Charitable Distributions (QCDs). If you’re 70½ or older, you can send money from your IRA directly to charity. It satisfies your RMD but never appears in your income. For charitable retirees, this is one of the cleanest IRMAA tools available.
Spread out big gains. Selling assets across two or three tax years, instead of all at once, can keep each year’s MAGI below a cliff.
Watch the calendar on everything. Remember the lookback. The income you report this year sets your premiums two years from now. Decisions you make at 63 hit your very first Medicare bill at 65.
The honest truth is that these strategies interact. A Roth conversion lowers future RMDs, which lowers future IRMAA, but raises this year’s MAGI. Seeing those trade-offs clearly usually takes a full multi-year model of your income, not a back-of-the-envelope guess. This is exactly the kind of problem good retirement planning software was built to solve, and it’s worth running before you sign anything.
Already got an IRMAA notice? You may be able to appeal
If your income dropped because of a major life change, you don’t have to accept the surcharge based on your old, higher income. Social Security calls these “life-changing events,” and the list includes retirement or reduced work hours, the death of a spouse, marriage, divorce, and the loss of a pension or income-producing property.
To appeal, file Form SSA-44 with the Social Security Administration and show what your income looks like now. Frank, our recently retired friend from earlier, is the textbook case. He stopped working, his income fell, and his appeal would likely knock his premium back to the standard $202.90.
One thing that does not qualify: a one-time spike like a Roth conversion or a home sale. If that’s what triggered your IRMAA, you’ll pay the surcharge for one year.
Is IRMAA permanent?
No, and this is genuinely good news. IRMAA is recalculated every single year based on a fresh tax return. If your income spiked once and then came back down, the surcharge disappears on its own two years after the spike. You’re never penalized for life.
That also means IRMAA planning never really ends. Every year’s income sets up a future year’s premium, all the way through retirement.
The bottom line
Run your numbers through the 2026 IRMAA calculator above before you make any big income move this year. The brackets are public, the cliffs are known, and a little planning before December 31 beats an unpleasant letter from Social Security every time.
This article is for educational purposes only and is not personalized financial, tax, or legal advice. Medicare figures change every year, and your situation is unique, so confirm the details with Medicare.gov, SSA.gov, or a qualified professional before acting.
Chapter Advisory, LLC (“Chapter”) is a private health insurance agency. In California, Chapter does business as Chapter Insurance Services (Lic. No. 6003691). Chapter is not affiliated with or endorsed by any government entity. While Chapter has a database of every Medicare plan option nationwide and can help you to search among all options, it has contracts with many but not all plans. As a result, Chapter does not offer every plan available in your area. Currently, Chapter represents 50 organizations which offer 18,601 products nationwide. You can contact a licensed Chapter agent to find out the number of products available in your specific area. Please contact Medicare.gov, 1-800-Medicare, or your local State Health Insurance Program (SHIP) to get information on all of your options. Enrollment in a plan may be limited to certain times of the year unless you qualify for a Special Enrollment Period or you are in your Medicare Initial Enrollment Period.
Average potential savings are based on realized premium, co-pay, and out of pocket savings estimates self-reported by consumers that worked with Chapter Advisory LLC to enroll in a Medicare Supplement, Medicare Advantage, and/or Part D Prescription Drug Plan. The average is limited to consumers that chose to self-report. Savings information is subject to periodic updates and corrections. There is no guarantee of savings and any savings may vary by policy type, state, or other factors.
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