What Are the 2026 Federal Tax Brackets?

There are seven federal income tax rates in 2026, and they run from 10% to 37%. The dollar bands they apply to are below, for single filers and for married couples filing jointly, and they are the figures the IRS published for the year in Rev. Proc. 2025-32.

One note before the table. These numbers are not typed into this article. They are read from the sourced-figure module this whole site runs on, which is checked against the IRS document on every build. A bracket table is the kind of page where a single transposed digit survives for a year because it looks plausible, and I did not want that to depend on me copying it correctly.

What are the 2026 federal income tax brackets?

The rate in the left column applies only to the income inside that row’s band. It is not the rate on the whole return.

Both columns are taxable income — what is left after your deduction, not your salary, not your gross withdrawals, and not the adjusted gross income figure that decides other things on the same return. That distinction does more damage than any other single misunderstanding in retirement tax planning, and I come back to it below.

What is the 2026 standard deduction?

For a married couple filing jointly it is $32,200. For a single filer it is $16,100, and for a head of household it is $24,150.

Then there is a second deduction that most bracket tables leave out, and it is the one that matters to the people reading this. A taxpayer who is 65 or older gets an additional standard deduction on top of the basic amount: $1,650 per qualifying spouse on a joint return, or $2,050 for someone unmarried. It stacks per condition, so a person who is both older and blind takes it twice.

A married couple who are both over that age therefore start from $35,500, not $32,200.

And for tax years 2025 through 2028 only, there is a third one — a temporary deduction of up to $6,000 per qualified individual, which phases out as income rises and disappears entirely above a threshold. It is available whether you itemize or not. Because it is temporary and because the phase-out is where the planning happens, I gave it its own page.

Stack all three and a retired couple can have a meaningful amount of income arrive before the 10% band even opens.

How do the 2026 tax brackets actually work?

The brackets work in slices. Your income is poured through the bands from the bottom, and each slice is taxed at its own rate. Moving into a higher bracket raises the rate on the dollars above the line and changes nothing about the dollars below it.

Here is the arithmetic, worked all the way through, for a married couple filing jointly with taxable income exactly at the top of the 22% bracket — $211,400. Everything in this list is computed from the table above.

• 10% on $24,800 of it: $2,480
• 12% on $76,000 of it: $9,120
• 22% on $110,600 of it: $24,332
• Total federal income tax: $35,932

That is a couple sitting at the very top of the 22% bracket paying an effective rate of about 17.0% on their taxable income.

The gap between 17.0% and 22% is the whole point. Your marginal rate is what the next dollar costs. Your effective rate is what the average dollar cost. Decisions get made at the margin — whether to convert, whether to realize a gain, whether to take one more withdrawal in December or wait until January — so the marginal rate is the number those choices turn on. The effective rate tells you what the year actually cost, and it is almost always lower than people expect.

Two habits follow from that.

Never describe yourself as “in the 22% bracket” as though it prices everything. It prices your last dollar. It never priced your first.

Never turn down income to stay out of a bracket. Crossing a line raises the rate on the amount above it only. There is no version of these tables where earning one more dollar leaves you with less.

If it helps to have the numbers in one place, I keep them all in the Ultimate Retirement Guide.

What are the 2026 long-term capital gains brackets?

They are a separate set of bands with their own rates, and they sit on top of your ordinary income rather than beside it.

The same bands apply to qualified dividends. The measure is still taxable income, and it is total taxable income — ordinary income fills the bands first and the gain stacks above it. So a couple with a large enough pension can have every dollar of long-term gain taxed at 15% even though the 0% band looks like it should reach them.

There is a fourth layer above all of this that the rate tables never show. The net investment income tax adds 3.8% on investment income once modified adjusted gross income passes $250,000 on a joint return or $200,000 for a single filer, under 26 U.S.C. §1411. It applies to the lesser of your net investment income or the amount by which your MAGI exceeds that threshold, which is why crossing it by a little costs a little. A couple $5,000 over with a large investment portfolio owes the 3.8% on the $5,000, not on the whole portfolio’s income. It is measured on a different line of the return from everything above, and it is not indexed, so it reaches further down each year.

What do the 2026 brackets mean for a Roth conversion?

They give you a ceiling, and the ceiling is a taxable income figure.

“Convert to the top of the 22% bracket” is one of the most repeated instructions in retirement content, and the number it points at is $211,400 of taxable income for a couple filing jointly. Add the standard deduction back and the adjusted gross income underneath it is higher — at least $243,600 for a couple taking the basic amount, and more for a couple over 65.

That matters because several other rules in retirement are measured on income before the deduction rather than after it. The Medicare premium surcharge is the sharpest of them: it reads modified adjusted gross income, it is a cliff rather than a ramp, and it prices a year two years after the income arrives. I worked that collision out in full on the 2026 IRMAA brackets, and the short version is that a couple who fill the 22% bracket precisely are already past the first surcharge threshold.

Filling a bracket and clearing an income threshold are two different measurements taken at two different lines on the same return. Nothing about hitting one tells you where you are on the other.

How do I find which bracket I am in?

Start from the return, not the paycheck.

Add up what is actually taxable. Withdrawals from traditional retirement accounts, pension income, interest, non-qualified dividends, and the portion of Social Security that gets pulled in. That last piece runs anywhere from none of it to most of it, depending on the rest of your income.

Subtract your deduction, including the pieces above. The basic standard deduction, the additional amount at 65 and over, and the temporary senior deduction if you qualify for it.

Read the remainder against the joint or single column. The band it lands in is your marginal bracket. Everything below that line was taxed at the lower rates on the way up.

Then look at what else moves. A conversion, a large required distribution, or a realized gain does not only fill a bracket. It moves adjusted gross income, and that figure prices Medicare premiums two years out, decides how much of a Social Security benefit becomes taxable, and switches the net investment income tax on. The brackets are the cheapest part of that chain to read and the least likely to be the binding constraint.

---

These are 2026 figures, published in Rev. Proc. 2025-32, and they are re-indexed for inflation every year. For the income measure that prices Medicare premiums, see the 2026 IRMAA brackets. For the temporary deduction and where it phases out, see the senior deduction phase-out. For how withdrawal order and timing interact with the bands above, see Withdrawal Strategy.