2027 tax brackets and standard deduction: the projection

The short answer. The 2026 federal tax brackets and standard deduction are confirmed, and the seven marginal rates of 10% through 37% are now permanent. Only the dollar thresholds and the standard deduction move each year, adjusted by a slow-moving inflation measure. The 2027 figures are not yet official; the Internal Revenue Service sets them in a Revenue Procedure expected between mid-October and November 2026 (the 2026 figures came in Rev. Proc. 2025-32 on October 9, 2025), and everything below for that year is a clearly-labeled projection built from the actual C-CPI-U data, not a flat-rate guess. See the IRS 2027 inflation adjustments tracker for every other indexed 2027 number the same method reproduces.

The rates are fixed; only the thresholds move

The most important thing to understand about any future tax year is what actually changes and what does not. The seven marginal rates — 10%, 12%, 22%, 24%, 32%, 35%, and 37% — were made permanent by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), specifically Section 70101, which amended Internal Revenue Code section 1(j). That permanence removes the cliff that used to loom at the end of each temporary rate schedule. So when someone asks what the 2027 rates will be, the honest answer is that they will be the same seven rates we have today. What moves from year to year is the income level at which each rate kicks in, along with the standard deduction that shields the first slice of income from tax entirely. Building the income those brackets apply to — your adjusted gross income (AGI), assembled from your W-2 and other sources — is the necessary first step before any bracket math means anything.

The confirmed 2026 figures

For 2026 the numbers are settled, published by the Internal Revenue Service in Revenue Procedure 2025-32. The standard deduction is $32,200 for married couples filing jointly, $16,100 for single filers and for married taxpayers filing separately, and $24,150 for heads of household. Those amounts are the baseline from which any 2027 projection has to be built, so it is worth anchoring on them.

The bracket thresholds for 2026 are likewise confirmed. The table below shows where each rate begins for single filers and for married couples filing jointly:

Rate	Single — begins at	Married filing jointly — begins at
10%	first dollar (up to $12,400)	first dollar (up to $24,800)
22%	over $50,400	over $100,800
24%	over $105,700	over $211,400
32%	over $201,775	over $403,550
37%	over $640,600	over $768,700

The 12% band fills the gap between the top of the 10% bracket and the start of the 22% bracket, and the 35% band sits between the 32% and 37% thresholds. Those two intermediate breakpoints are not reproduced here because precision matters more than completeness; the figures above are the ones the Internal Revenue Service has confirmed. Note, too, that these are the brackets for ordinary income. Long-term investment profits ride on a separate set of capital-gains brackets with their own thresholds, which is a common and costly source of confusion. One more use of the 37 percent thresholds is new for 2026: they set where the rewritten section 68 limitation on itemized deductions begins, which is why the 2026 draft Schedule A asks whether income exceeds $384,350, the married-filing-separately figure; see Schedule A 2026 draft: what changed.

The 2026 AMT figures, confirmed by the draft Form 6251

The alternative minimum tax has its own inflation-adjusted numbers, and the draft Form 6251 for 2026, posted May 26, 2026, prints them. The exemption is $90,100 for single and head-of-household filers, $140,200 for joint returns and $70,100 for married filing separately, up from $88,100, $137,000 and $68,500 on the 2025 form. The 26 percent rate now applies to the first $244,500 of income above the exemption ($122,250 married filing separately), up from $239,100.

The larger change is where the exemption starts to disappear. Public Law 119-21, section 70107, made the post-2017 AMT structure permanent but reset the phase-out threshold in 26 U.S.C. 55(d)(4) to $1,000,000 for joint returns and half of that for everyone else, indexed only from 2026 onward, and doubled the phase-out rate from 25 percent to 50 percent of the excess. The 2026 draft accordingly shows $500,000 for single filers, $1,000,000 for joint returns and $500,000 for married filing separately, against $626,350, $1,252,700 and $626,350 in 2025.

Filing status	2025: exemption / phase-out starts / fully gone	2026: exemption / phase-out starts / fully gone
Single or head of household	$88,100 / $626,350 / $978,750	$90,100 / $500,000 / $680,200
Married filing jointly	$137,000 / $1,252,700 / $1,800,700	$140,200 / $1,000,000 / $1,280,400
Married filing separately	$68,500 / $626,350 / $900,350	$70,100 / $500,000 / $640,200

The “fully gone” column is the threshold plus the exemption divided by the phase-out rate, and the draft form confirms the married-filing-separately figure in its own note on line 4 ($640,200 for 2026, $900,350 on the 2025 form). A joint filer with $1.2 million of AMT income keeps only $40,200 of exemption in 2026, where the 2025 rules would have left the full $137,000 intact, which is why incentive-stock-option exercises and large capital gains in the $1 million to $1.8 million range are the cases to re-run for 2026.

How the annual inflation bump works

The mechanism that carries 2026 into 2027 is written into Internal Revenue Code section 1(f)(3). Each year the thresholds and the standard deduction are adjusted by the chained Consumer Price Index (C-CPI-U), and then rounded — the standard deduction to the nearest $50. The word “chained” is doing real work here. The chained index assumes that as prices rise, people substitute toward cheaper goods, so it climbs more slowly than the traditional Consumer Price Index that governed indexing in earlier decades. The practical effect is that the annual increases are modest. Brackets and the standard deduction creep upward rather than leap, which is precisely why a projection from a confirmed base is reasonable even though it is not official.

What 2027 might look like — clearly a projection

With the mechanism in hand we can sketch 2027, and — thanks to C-CPI-U data now published through August 2026, which closes the twelve-month window — we no longer have to lean on a flat inflation guess to do it. Applying the actual statutory formula (detailed in the next section) to the confirmed 2026 married-filing-jointly standard deduction of $32,200 puts the 2027 figure at $33,200. The same arithmetic, applied to the single-filer standard deduction of $16,100, points to $16,600, and the head-of-household figure of $24,150 rises to $24,950 in the central scenario. The bracket thresholds shift upward by a similar small percentage, so the point at which a single filer crosses into the 22% rate, confirmed at over $50,400 for 2026, moves to roughly $52,000.

Every one of those 2027 numbers is still a projection, not an IRS release. The window is closed, but a data gap left by the 2025 government shutdown means there are still two defensible ways to run the twelve-month average, depending on whether the missing October 2025 month is imputed. The next section walks through both, with the full set of bracket tables. For the parallel projection on the wealth-transfer side, see the 2027 estate and gift tax exemption projection, which OBBBA made permanent at $15 million per person.

The projection, run on the actual index

Every figure in the section above followed from the real statutory mechanism, not a round guess, so it is worth showing that mechanism directly. Under 26 U.S.C. §1(f)(3) and §1(f)(6), the “C-CPI-U for any calendar year” used to index brackets and the standard deduction is the average of the 12 months ending August 31 of that year. For the 2027 adjustment, that window runs from September 2025 through August 2026, and the August reading — published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday, September 11, 2026, at 8:30 a.m. ET — was the last input the formula needs.

Here is every C-CPI-U reading (BLS series SUUR0000SA0) published for that window:

Month	C-CPI-U
September 2025	180.373
October 2025	not collected
November 2025	179.889
December 2025	179.775
January 2026	180.409
February 2026	181.258
March 2026	183.193
April 2026	184.680
May 2026	185.771
June 2026	185.172
July 2026	185.162
August 2026	185.739 (initial)

October 2025 does not exist, and it never will. The federal government shutdown that month stopped the Bureau of Labor Statistics from collecting the price data, and the agency will not reconstruct it retroactively. That leaves two defensible ways to compute the 12-month average feeding the 2027 numbers, now that the window itself is closed:

• Central scenario — average the eleven months that actually exist, September 2025 through August 2026, using the real published values throughout, including August’s 185.739. That produces an average of 182.8565.
• October-imputed scenario — impute October 2025 as the average of the surrounding months, September and November (180.131), then average all 12 months including that imputed value and the real August reading. That produces 182.6293.

The check on this method is that it is not new: applying it to the September 2024–August 2025 window, using the average the IRS itself used, 177.11, reproduces every 2026 figure in Revenue Procedure 2025-32 exactly — the brackets and standard deduction below, along with the $3,400 FSA cap and the $19,000 gift exclusion tracked elsewhere on this site. A method that reproduces a known answer three ways is worth trusting on the unknown one.

Applying that 182.8565 average against the fixed base periods the statute anchors each threshold to — a ratio of 1.3446 against the 2016 base of 135.993, or 1.3228 against the 2017 base of 138.237, depending on which provision the specific threshold falls under — produces the central-scenario dollar figures below; the October-imputed average of 182.6293 produces the alternate column.

Standard deduction

Filing status	2026 official	2027 central	2027 if October is imputed
Single	$16,100	$16,600	$16,600
Married filing jointly	$32,200	$33,200	$33,200
Head of household	$24,150	$24,950	$24,900

The single-filer figure was the closest to a rounding edge, and it has now settled: an August C-CPI-U reading of 186.245 or higher — a jump of about 0.58% over July — would have rounded the single standard deduction up to $16,650 instead of $16,600, but August published at 185.739, safely below that line, leaving the unrounded single figure at $16,646. The married-filing-jointly figure is likewise settled, at $33,200. The head-of-household figure is the one still genuinely live: its unrounded value is $24,969 in the central scenario, rounding to $24,950, and $24,938 if October is imputed, rounding to $24,900 — close enough on both sides that the IRS’s choice of method, not the August print, decides which one appears in the revenue procedure.

Married filing jointly — bracket ceilings

Rate	2026 official	2027 central	2027 if October is imputed
10%	$24,800	$25,600	$25,550
12%	$100,800	$104,050	$103,900
22%	$211,400	$218,250	$217,950
24%	$403,550	$416,650	$416,150
32%	$512,450	$529,100	$528,450
35%	$768,700	$793,650	$792,650

Single filers — bracket ceilings

Rate	2026 official	2027 central	2027 if October is imputed
10%	$12,400	$12,800	$12,775
12%	$50,400	$52,025	$51,950
22%	$105,700	$109,125	$108,975
24%	$201,775	$208,325	$208,075
32%	$256,225	$264,550	$264,225
35%	$640,600	$661,375	$660,550

Head of household — bracket ceilings

Rate	2026 official	2027 central	2027 if October is imputed
10%	$17,700	$18,250	$18,250
12%	$67,450	$69,650	$69,550
22%	$105,700	$109,100	$108,950
24%	$201,750	$208,300	$208,050
32%	$256,200	$264,550	$264,200
35%	$640,600	$661,350	$660,550

Every column labeled “2026 official” above is confirmed, from Revenue Procedure 2025-32. Every column labeled “2027 central” or “2027 if October is imputed” is this page’s own arithmetic — built from the statute and the published index, not from the Internal Revenue Service. Given how precisely the same method reproduces the confirmed 2026 numbers, the central-scenario column is the one most likely to match the eventual official release closely, but neither 2027 column is official until the IRS says so. For the complete set of every 2027 figure this same method reproduces — the FSA cap, the gift exclusion, the estate exemption, IRMAA — see the IRS 2027 inflation adjustments tracker.

When the official numbers arrive — and what to do now

The C-CPI-U window that decides these numbers is now closed; the only remaining question is the October treatment — whether the calculation imputes the missing 2025 month or averages the eleven months that exist — and the IRS will settle it in the revenue procedure, expected between mid-October and November 2026 (the 2026 figures came in Rev. Proc. 2025-32 on October 9, 2025). This page will be updated the moment those figures are published. Until then, the actionable takeaway is the part that is already certain: the seven rates are permanent, the thresholds and standard deduction are indexed each year by the slow-moving chained Consumer Price Index, and the confirmed 2026 figures above are the firm ground you should plan from. The modest size of the annual bump means your 2026 marginal rate is a reliable guide to where you will likely sit in 2027 unless your income changes materially.

That stability also sharpens one recurring decision. Because the standard deduction rises a little each year, the bar your itemizable expenses must clear to be worth the trouble rises with it — so the question of whether to take the standard deduction or itemize is worth revisiting annually rather than assuming last year’s answer still holds. Check back here in the fall; we will swap every projected 2027 figure for the confirmed one as soon as the Internal Revenue Service makes it official.