Tax brackets are how the IRS determines which income levels get taxed at which federal income tax rates. The higher the income you report on your tax return, the higher your tax rate.
Here we'll go over the new IRS federal tax brackets for the 2021 and 2022 tax years, how to figure out which ones you fall into, and give you a heads up about any other inflation-related changes to your taxes in 2022.
Which tax bracket you fall into in the United States also depends on your filing status. Here are the 2022 tax brackets according to the IRS. These will be used for your 2023 tax filing.
It's broken into the four most common filing statuses: individual single filers, married individuals filing jointly, heads of households, and married individuals filing separately:
Below are the 2023 tax brackets according to the IRS. These will be used for your 2024 tax filing:
Tax brackets are based on your taxable income, which is what you get when you take all of the money you've earned and subtract all of the tax deductions you're eligible for. (Check out Accracy's Big List of Small Business Tax Deductions for more info.)
Once you've calculated your taxable income, it's time to look at the IRS's tax rate schedule—a fancy term for "˜big list of tax system brackets'—for the year you're doing your taxes for.
(Keep in mind, these brackets are for income tax only; capital gains tax uses its own set of brackets.)
Let's take the IRS tax brackets for individual single filers in 2022:
Unless you made $10,275 or less in taxable income in 2022, it's likely you fall into at least two brackets. This means different parts of your income is taxed at a different rate.
For example, let's say that your taxable income ends up being $20,000. That means you'll fall into two different tax brackets and get taxed at two different rates:
So you'll pay two different tax rates: 10% on the first $10,275 "˜chunk' of your income, and 12% on every dollar you made above $10,275.
In equation form, we'd write this out as:
Total tax = (10% x $10,275) + (12% x [$20,000-$10,275])
Total tax = $1027.50 + $1,167.00
Total tax bill = $2,194.50
We call the highest tax rate that you pay your marginal tax rate. In this example, your marginal tax rate is 12%.
The math involved in calculating how much you owe from each "˜chunk' of income can get complicated. To make things easier, here are four cheat sheets for determining the amount of tax you need to pay, organized by filing status:
Remember: if on the last day of 2022 you were unmarried or legally separated from your spouse—and you don't qualify for another filing status—you file your taxes in 2023 as an individual single taxpayer.
Here's how much you are taxed:
If you're married and both you and your spouse agree to file a joint return, or you're a qualifying widow(er), use the following to figure out your taxes for 2022:
If you're married and you decide that filing individually could lower your tax burden, or you and your spouse don't agree to file a joint return, you'll use this filing status.
Here's how much married individuals filing separately are taxed on income in 2022:
If you:
Then you might qualify for the "œhead of household" filing status. If so, use the following to figure out your taxes on income in 2022:
If you compare this year's tax brackets to the ones from previous years, you might notice they've all been slightly adjusted. Why is that?
It all has to do with inflation. Every year the IRS tweaks the tax brackets to prevent "œbracket creep," which is what happens when inflation pushes you into a higher tax bracket.
If you haven't looked up your bracket since 2017, there's a major tax reform you should look out for. The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act passed in December of 2017 changed the way the IRS calculates inflation, which will mean smaller annual inflation adjustments down the road.
That increases your chances of getting bumped up into a higher tax bracket every year. If you just barely avoided entering a higher tax bracket this year and think you might be a borderline case next year, make sure to follow the IRS's inflation adjustment announcements closely.
We mentioned earlier that the IRS's tax brackets apply to your taxable income, which is what you get when you apply certain adjustments and deductions to your revenue.
One other way that the IRS helps guard against bracket creep is by adjusting the values of deductions to keep up with inflation. Here are the main ones you should look out for:
Your standard deduction—the portion of your income that is protected from taxes—gets adjusted every year to keep up with inflation. The standard deduction amounts for the 2023 tax year (and their increases from the 2022 tax year) are:
Adjustments are a special kind of deduction that lets you reduce your taxable income even before you start applying the standard deduction or itemizing. You can find a summary of all the updated adjustment figures on the IRS website here.
Unlike deductions, which reduce your taxable income, tax credits directly reduce your tax amount owed. Tax credits that the IRS adjusted for inflation this year include:
The earned income credit increased to a range of $600 to $7,430 in 2023 depending on your filing status and the number of children you have. This is up slightly from $560 to $6,935 from last year.
The adjusted gross income (AGI) at which you start to lose the lifetime learning credit is $90,000 in 2023 for single filers. But for married couples filing jointly, the credit starts to phase out when your 2023 AGI reaches $180,000.
The maximum amount of qualified adoption expenses you can use to determine your adoption credit increased to $14,890 per child.
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