2027 Tax Brackets: Official vs Projected Numbers

Every fall, a reader asks me for next year's tax brackets, and every fall the honest answer has two parts: some 2027 numbers are already law, and the most-quoted ones are still projections. As of mid-October, the IRS had not published the 2027 tax brackets, standard deduction, or other inflation-adjusted amounts; its inflation-adjustment table still ends at tax year 2026, as this IRS status check documented on October 14. That does not make planning impossible. It makes labeling essential. Here is the split, with the worked math on the numbers that are solid enough to use.

What is already official for 2027

Item	2026	2027	Status
Social Security wage base	$184,500	$192,300	Final, SSA
Social Security COLA	2.8%	3.6%	Final, SSA
HSA limit, self-only / family	$4,400 / $8,750	$4,500 / $9,000	Final, IRS Rev. Proc. 2026-24
Standard deduction, single / joint	$16,100 / $32,200	Not yet published	IRS pending

The Social Security figures are final because the SSA published them on October 14: benefits rise 3.6 percent in 2027, and you can read your own notice timing in the SSA's COLA FAQ. I covered the benefit side in my piece on the COLA net raise. The wage base is the paycheck side: at the 2027 ceiling of 192,300 dollars, an employee pays 11,922.60 dollars of Social Security tax across the year, 483.60 dollars more than at the 2026 ceiling, per the 2027 bracket status tracker. The HSA limits are also final, which is why my open-enrollment FSA vs HSA math can already use them.

What is projected, and how good the projections are

Bloomberg Tax published its 2027 projections in September, applying a 3.2 percent inflation adjustment. On those numbers, the standard deduction rises to 16,600 dollars for single filers and 33,200 dollars for married couples filing jointly, with head of household at roughly 25,000 dollars, and the 37 percent top rate beginning above 661,375 dollars (single) and 793,650 dollars (joint), as summarized in this projection breakdown. The seven rates themselves do not change; the 2025 tax law made the current structure permanent, so only the thresholds move.

2026 official standard deductions (IRS Rev. Proc. 2025-32) against Bloomberg Tax's 2027 projections. The IRS figures, when published, govern; projections are for planning only. Source: IRS; Bloomberg Tax via CBS News reporting.

The one calculation worth doing now

Projections are good enough for exactly one job: sizing moves you will finalize later, like a Roth conversion or a year-end IRA withdrawal. Here is the joint-filer version. Bloomberg Tax projects the top of the 12 percent bracket at 104,050 dollars of taxable income for joint filers in 2027, up 3,250 dollars from 100,800 dollars in 2026. If your 2027 taxable income would otherwise land near that edge, that extra 3,250 dollars of room taxed at 12 percent instead of 22 percent is worth 325 dollars (3,250 times the 10-point rate difference). Add the projected 1,000-dollar rise in the joint standard deduction, worth another 120 dollars at the 12 percent rate, and a couple planning around the projection is looking at roughly 445 dollars of difference versus planning on 2026 numbers. That is real money, and it is also an estimate: do the sizing now, as I did for the projected 2027 401(k) limit, and re-run the final transaction against the IRS release when it lands, expected in late October or early November.

My rule for the next few weeks

Plan on projections, file on officials. Use the Bloomberg Tax figures to decide how much room you probably have; use the SSA and HSA figures, which are final, for anything that hits a paycheck or an open-enrollment form this fall; and treat any website that prints 2027 brackets without the word projected as a site that has stopped distinguishing between a forecast and a fact. The IRS release will settle it, and when it does, the numbers in this piece that are labeled projected should be checked against it first.