The IRS hasn’t published its 2027 tax brackets, standard deduction or 401(k) limits yet. As of October 19, 2026, the official numbers are expected within weeks, and the best estimates point to brackets about 3.2% wider and a 401(k) limit most likely landing at $25,500. This guide keeps what’s confirmed apart from what’s projected, so you can plan without getting burned.
Where things stand right now
Here’s the honest picture on October 19: nothing for tax year 2027 is official yet when it comes to the three things most people care about. The IRS’s inflation-adjusted table still stops at 2026, and as of mid-October the agency hadn’t said when the 2027 numbers would appear. Last year it moved fast. The 2026 tax brackets and standard deduction came out on October 9, 2025, even with a government shutdown underway, and the 401(k) limits followed on November 13, 2025.
So the working assumption, shared by most tax publishers, is that the bracket announcement arrives in late October or early November, with the retirement plan limits close behind. The brackets come in a revenue procedure. The 401(k) figures come in a separate IRS notice. They’re built from different inflation data, which is why they don’t always show up on the same day.
A few 2027 items are already out. The IRS published the 2027 health savings account limits in the spring, and it has released the 2027 affordability percentages used for employer coverage and premium tax credits. Those matter, but they’re not what you came here for.
Throughout this article, I’m going to label every number one of two ways. Official means it comes straight from an IRS release. Projected means it’s an estimate from a tax publisher or actuarial firm, computed using the same formulas the IRS uses. The projections have been pretty reliable in the past. Still, an estimate is an estimate, and I’ll tell you where this year’s has an extra wrinkle.
Why the numbers move (and why this year is messy)
Every year the IRS nudges its income thresholds upward so inflation alone doesn’t push you into a higher bracket. Tax people call the problem bracket creep. Say you get a 4% raise and prices rose 4%. Your buying power hasn’t changed, but without an adjustment more of your income could land in a higher bracket anyway. The annual indexing is the fix.
The measure the IRS uses is the chained consumer price index, or C-CPI-U, averaged over the twelve months ending in August. That’s a change that came with the 2017 tax law, and the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) left it in place. Chained CPI tends to run a little lower than the headline CPI number you see on the news, because it accounts for people swapping to cheaper goods when prices jump.
Here’s the wrinkle for 2027. The Bureau of Labor Statistics never published a CPI reading for October 2025, a casualty of the federal shutdown that fall. So there’s a hole in the twelve-month window. Bloomberg Tax, Wolters Kluwer and Thomson Reuters all handled it the same way: they averaged the eleven months that do exist, September 2025 through August 2026. Wolters Kluwer is upfront that it isn’t clear how the IRS will treat the missing month, so the official figures could differ from the projections. My read is that any gap will be small, but it’s a real caveat, and it’s the main reason I wouldn’t treat any projected dollar figure here as final.
Inflation has also picked up this year. CBS News, citing Bloomberg Tax, reports the projected 2027 bracket increase is about 3.2%, up from 2.7% for 2026. Part of that is energy prices. August’s consumer price index showed annual inflation of 3.4%, higher than economists expected. For taxpayers, that’s a mixed bag: wider brackets, but they’re widening because things cost more.
What the 2027 tax brackets will probably look like
The seven rates don’t change: 10%, 12%, 22%, 24%, 32%, 35% and 37%. Those rates were made permanent by the 2025 law, so what’s moving is only the dollar amounts where each rate kicks in. The tables below show the top of each bracket, comparing the official 2026 amounts (from Revenue Procedure 2025-32) with the 2027 projections published by Thomson Reuters Checkpoint and Wolters Kluwer in September. These are taxable income figures, meaning what’s left after your deductions, not your salary.
Single filers
| Rate | 2026 (official), income up to | 2027 (projected), income up to |
|---|---|---|
| 10% | $12,400 | $12,800 |
| 12% | $50,400 | $52,025 |
| 22% | $105,700 | $109,125 |
| 24% | $201,775 | $208,325 |
| 32% | $256,225 | $264,550 |
| 35% | $640,600 | $661,375 |
| 37% | Over $640,600 | Over $661,375 |
Married filing jointly (and surviving spouses)
| Rate | 2026 (official), income up to | 2027 (projected), income up to |
|---|---|---|
| 10% | $24,800 | $25,600 |
| 12% | $100,800 | $104,050 |
| 22% | $211,400 | $218,250 |
| 24% | $403,550 | $416,650 |
| 32% | $512,450 | $529,100 |
| 35% | $768,700 | $793,650 |
| 37% | Over $768,700 | Over $793,650 |
Heads of household get their own schedule. The projected 2027 breakpoints run $18,250 for the 10% bracket, $69,650 for 12%, $109,100 for 22%, $208,300 for 24%, $264,550 for 32% and $661,350 for 35%. Married people filing separately use the single-filer numbers up to the 35% bracket, then the top rate starts at $396,825 instead.
A couple of things jump out. The widest gains go to higher earners in raw dollars, simply because a 3.2% increase on a bigger number is a bigger number. The 12% bracket for a married couple, though, grows by about $3,250 at the top end, and that’s the range where a lot of retirees plan Roth conversions and income withdrawals. If that describes you, the extra room is useful.
Treat the figures as close, not exact. Different publishers’ projections already disagree by $25 here and there on certain bracket edges because of rounding rules. The IRS rounds down to the nearest $25 for single and separate filers and $50 for most other amounts, and the final official table will settle every one of these.
The standard deduction for 2027
For most households the standard deduction does more work than any bracket. It’s the chunk of income you can subtract from your taxable total without keeping a single receipt, and the large majority of filers take it rather than itemizing.
The starting point is the number the 2025 law reset. For tax year 2025, the standard deduction rose to $15,750 for single filers, $31,500 for married couples filing jointly and $23,625 for heads of household. For 2026 the IRS bumped those to $16,100, $32,200 and $24,150. The projected 2027 amounts are another step up.
| Filing status | 2025 (official) | 2026 (official) | 2027 (projected) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Single | $15,750 | $16,100 | $16,600 |
| Married filing separately | $15,750 | $16,100 | $16,600 |
| Head of household | $23,625 | $24,150 | $24,900–$24,950 |
| Married filing jointly / surviving spouse | $31,500 | $32,200 | $33,200 |
The head of household range is there because the two main projections landed $50 apart, one at $24,900 and the other at $24,950. That gap is just rounding, and it’s a good example of why you want to wait for the revenue procedure before putting a number in a spreadsheet.
If you’re 65 or older, or blind, you add a little on top of the base amount. For 2026 that’s $1,650 per person if you’re married and $2,050 if you’re single or a head of household. Projections put those at $1,700 and $2,100 for 2027. Someone who’s 65 and single would be looking at about $18,700 in total, if the projections hold.
Separately, there’s the new senior deduction that came with the 2025 law, and it’s not the same thing as the extra standard deduction above. Anyone 65 or older can claim up to $6,000 on top of the standard deduction for tax years 2025 through 2028. It shrinks by 6 cents for every dollar your modified adjusted gross income goes over $75,000 for a single filer, or $150,000 for a joint return. Because Congress set the dollar amounts in the statute, they don’t change with inflation, so 2027 looks the same as 2026 here. If you’re helping a parent plan, that deduction is easy to overlook.
One more detail for families. The standard deduction for someone who can be claimed as a dependent, a teenager with a summer job, say, is projected to be $1,400 in 2027, or $500 plus their earned income, whichever is greater, up from $1,350 this year.
What it means in dollars
It’s easier to feel a bracket change with real numbers. Here are two simple cases, both assuming the same income in both years and nothing but the standard deduction. I ran the math with the official 2026 schedule and the projected 2027 one.
| Scenario | Federal income tax, 2026 | Federal income tax, 2027 (projected) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Single, $60,000 income | $5,020 | $4,952 | −$68 |
| Married filing jointly, $150,000 income | $15,340 | $14,779 | −$561 |
Take the single filer first. After the $16,100 deduction in 2026, $43,900 is taxable: 10% on the first $12,400 and 12% on the rest. In 2027, the deduction grows to $16,600 and the 10% bracket widens, so the same paycheck is taxed on $43,400 and a bit more of it sits in the cheaper bracket. The saving is $68, which is about what Bloomberg Tax’s own example shows. For the couple, the difference is $561. A bigger standard deduction ($33,200 against $32,200) and wider 10% and 12% brackets do the work together.
Nobody’s income stays flat, and a $68 saving won’t make anyone’s year. The adjustment isn’t a tax cut. It’s the government agreeing not to take a larger share just because prices went up. If you get a 3% raise next year, roughly in line with these adjustments, your tax rate should stay about where it was. If your raise is larger, or you have investment income, a bigger share of that extra money will run into higher brackets, as it always does.
