2027 Federal Tax Brackets: Projected Rates (Not Official)

2027 Federal Tax Brackets: What's Projected So Far

The IRS has not yet released official 2027 federal income tax brackets. The IRS typically announces the following year's inflation-adjusted brackets, standard deduction, and related figures in October or November — for 2026, that announcement came via Revenue Procedure 2025-32 on October 9, 2025. The equivalent 2027 announcement is expected in a similar window this autumn, and will appear on the IRS's own newsroom page when released.

In the meantime, tax data providers Bloomberg Tax and Thomson Reuters Checkpoint publish annual early projections using the same inflation methodology the IRS itself uses (the chained Consumer Price Index, or chained CPI-U), so tax professionals can start planning before the official numbers land. Their most recent 2027 projection, published September 11, 2026, forecasts a ~3.2% inflation adjustment — up from 2.7% for 2026 — based on an 11-month annualized average of chained CPI-U data (the Department of Labor did not publish October 2025 inflation figures due to a government shutdown, so the projection methodology adjusted for that gap).

Every figure on this page below is a projection, not a confirmed IRS number. We'll update this page with the official figures the moment the IRS publishes its 2027 Revenue Procedure, expected around October–November 2026.

Projected 2027 Federal Tax Brackets — Single Filers

Based on the Bloomberg Tax / Thomson Reuters Checkpoint consensus projection (~3.2% chained CPI-U adjustment, statutory rounding to the nearest $50), here's how the 2027 single-filer brackets compare to the confirmed 2026 brackets:

What this means: if the projection holds, a single filer could earn about $1,425 more in 2027 before crossing from the 22% into the 24% bracket compared to 2026 — small bracket-creep relief driven by inflation indexing, not a rate cut.

Projected 2027 Federal Tax Brackets — Married Filing Jointly

The same 3.2% projected adjustment applied to the confirmed 2026 married-filing-jointly brackets:

The projected 12% bracket ceiling for married couples ($104,050) is independently corroborated by CBS News' reporting on the same Bloomberg Tax projection — a useful cross-check that this figure is being reported consistently across sources, not a single-source estimate.

Projected 2027 Standard Deduction

The standard deduction is adjusted separately from the bracket thresholds, using the same chained CPI-U methodology:

Note the head-of-household figure isn't included in the published 2027 projections we could source — we've deliberately left it blank rather than estimate it ourselves. It will be added once the IRS confirms it or a sourced third-party projection publishes it.

Why 2027's Projected Increase Is Larger Than 2026's

The 2026 inflation adjustment came in at 2.7% overall, though the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA) gave the bottom two brackets a larger 4% boost and the higher brackets a smaller 2.3% increase — a deliberate policy choice to give more relief to lower earners. The projected 2027 adjustment of ~3.2% is a broader inflation-driven figure without that same policy-driven split, reflecting the general chained CPI-U trend over the 2025-2026 measurement period.

Why 'chained' CPI specifically? The IRS has used chained CPI-U (rather than the traditional CPI-U) for tax bracket indexing since the 2018 tax year, a change made by the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Chained CPI typically runs slightly lower than traditional CPI because it accounts for consumers substituting cheaper goods when prices rise — meaning bracket adjustments (and the resulting 'bracket creep' relief) are usually a bit smaller under chained CPI than they would be under the older methodology.

A methodology wrinkle for 2027: the federal government shutdown meant the Department of Labor didn't publish October 2025 inflation data on schedule. Bloomberg Tax's projection adjusted for this by using an 11-month annualized average instead of the usual 12-month period — worth knowing if the eventual official IRS figure lands slightly differently than this projection once the missing data point is available.

What to Do With These Numbers Before They're Official

Projected figures like these are genuinely useful for directional planning, but the distinction between 'projected' and 'confirmed' matters for how you use them.

Good uses for the projected figures

• Rough 2027 take-home pay planning: if you're budgeting for next year or deciding whether a raise will push meaningful income into a higher bracket, these projections are accurate enough to plan around — the final numbers are very unlikely to shift by more than a few hundred dollars from these estimates.
• Year-end 2026 timing decisions: if you're deciding whether to accelerate income into 2026 or defer it into 2027 (for example, a bonus, a Roth conversion, or harvesting capital gains), knowing that 2027's brackets will very likely be wider than 2026's — not narrower — helps frame that decision even before the exact numbers are locked in.
• Employer and payroll planning: businesses budgeting 2027 payroll tax withholding tables can use these figures as a working baseline, with the understanding that IRS Publication 15-T (the actual withholding tables) won't be finalized until after the official Revenue Procedure.

What NOT to do with projected figures

• Don't file your actual 2027 tax return using these numbers. By the time you file in early 2028, the confirmed figures will be in every tax software and IRS form — use those, not this page's projections.
• Don't treat small differences as meaningful. If your income sits within a few hundred dollars of a bracket boundary shown here, don't assume which side of the line you'll land on — wait for the confirmed figure.
• Don't assume Congress won't act. These projections assume current law continues unchanged. Tax legislation can be signed at any point before the 2027 tax year begins and would override an inflation-only projection.

Bottom line: treat this page as a reliable early forecast for planning purposes, and check back here (or directly with the IRS) for the confirmed numbers before doing anything that depends on precision — like calculating exact estimated tax payments or a final Roth conversion amount.