Tax year 2026 figures. Last updated .
The 2026 rates
The rates themselves did not change for 2026. Long-term gains are still taxed at 0%, 15% or 20%; short-term gains are still taxed as ordinary income at rates up to 37%; collectibles are still capped at 28% and depreciation recapture at 25%.
What changed are the thresholds. Every income figure that decides which rate you reach was adjusted for inflation, and those adjustments are published in IRS Revenue Procedure 2025-32.
What moved with inflation
The long-term capital gain ceilings moved: for 2026 a single filer holds the 0% rate up to $49,450 of taxable income and the 15% rate up to $545,500, with joint filers at $98,900 and $613,700. The seven ordinary brackets moved. The standard deduction moved, to $16,100 single and $32,200 joint — which matters here because it is subtracted before the ceilings are measured, so a larger deduction quietly widens the band you can fit a gain into.
These are annual adjustments under IRC § 1(f), and they are the reason a capital gains article written for last year gives the wrong answer this year even though nothing in the law changed.
What did not move, and why that matters more each year
Three figures are frozen in statute and receive no inflation adjustment at all.
The net investment income tax thresholds — $200,000 single, $250,000 joint — have been fixed since the tax took effect in 2013. Thirteen years of inflation later they capture a materially larger share of filers than they did on day one, and they will keep doing so.
The capital loss offset against ordinary income is $3,000 a year, unchanged since 1978. In inflation-adjusted terms it is worth a small fraction of what it was when set.
The home-sale exclusion under section 121 is $250,000 single and $500,000 joint, fixed since 1997. In markets where house prices have multiplied since then, that unindexed ceiling is doing more work every year — it is why long-tenured owners in expensive areas increasingly face a taxable gain on a home they assumed was covered.
The citation error worth knowing about
The capital gains ceilings for 2026 are in section 4.03 of Revenue Procedure 2025-32. A great many pages cite them as § 3.03, because that was the numbering in the previous year’s revenue procedure and the citation was carried forward when the figures were updated.
It is a small thing, but it is a reliable tell. A page that quotes 2026 figures under a 2025 section number did not read the 2026 document. This site cites § 4.01 for the ordinary brackets, § 4.03 for the capital gain ceilings and § 4.14 for the standard deduction, and a regression test fails the build if a § 3.x citation ever reappears in the data.
State rates for 2026 are on a different calendar
Federal figures arrive in the autumn for the year ahead. State figures do not. Many departments publish their indexed brackets in November or December for the year just ending, which means that for part of any given year the current-year state thresholds genuinely do not exist yet.
This site separates the two: a state’s rate structure is statutory and verifiable at any time, while its thresholds are indexed and may lag. Where thresholds are carried from an earlier year the calculator still computes but says so in a warning naming the year. See the state comparison for what is currently computable.
How to check any of these figures yourself
Every number on this page is in a single document: IRS Revenue Procedure 2025-32, published in Internal Revenue Bulletin 2025-45. It is freely available and it is not long. Section 4.01 carries the ordinary brackets, 4.03 the capital gain ceilings, 4.14 the standard deduction.
A quick way to test whether a source actually read it: each bracket in the ordinary table is published with a cumulative tax base — the "$X plus 24% of the excess over $Y" formulation. Those bases are arithmetically derivable from the bracket boundaries. If a page’s figures are right, the bases reconcile. This site recomputed every one of them as a check, and the derivation on any result cites the section it came from.
What would have to happen for the rates themselves to change
The 0/15/20 structure is set by statute, not by the annual revenue procedure. Changing it takes an act of Congress, not an inflation adjustment. The same is true of the 25% recapture cap, the 28% collectibles cap and the 3.8% surtax rate.
That is why this site separates the two kinds of figure throughout, for states as well as federally: a rate structure is statutory and verifiable at any time of year, while a threshold is indexed and has a publication calendar. Conflating them is what produces pages that are confidently wrong every January.
It also means a headline about "capital gains tax rates rising" is describing proposed legislation, not the annual adjustment — and until such a bill passes, the 2026 figures on this page are the operative ones.
Who actually notices the 2026 adjustments
Indexation is invisible to most filers and decisive for a few. It is worth knowing which group you are in.
If your income is comfortably inside a band, a few thousand dollars of movement in the ceilings changes nothing. If you are near a boundary, it changes the rate on your marginal dollar — and the boundaries moved by meaningful amounts for 2026.
Three groups feel it most. Filers close to the 0% ceiling, where a wider band can make a modest gain entirely free of federal tax. Filers near the 15%/20% boundary, where the ceiling moving up may keep a gain at 15% that would otherwise have crossed. And anyone relying on the standard deduction, which rose to $16,100 single and $32,200 joint — because it is subtracted before the ceilings are measured, a larger deduction widens every band beneath it at once.
Nobody near the net investment income tax threshold feels anything, because that threshold does not move. Each year it captures a slightly larger share of filers by doing nothing at all.
Where the 2027 figures will come from
The IRS publishes inflation adjustments for the following year in the autumn, in a revenue procedure numbered for the year of publication rather than the year it describes. The 2026 figures are in Rev. Proc. 2025-32; the 2027 figures will arrive in a 2026-numbered document late in the year.
That publication lag is why this site stores tax data in dated files that are never edited. Adding 2027 means creating a new file and registering it, leaving the 2026 figures untouched and permanently reproducible. A reader checking a calculation done in 2026 will get the same answer in 2030.
It also means a page that silently updates its numbers in place has quietly destroyed the ability to check any figure it produced before. The methodology page sets out the update procedure in full.
One rate that is not a capital gains rate at all
Depreciation recapture on non-real-property assets — equipment, vehicles, furniture used in a business — is section 1245 recapture, and it is taxed as ordinary income rather than at any capital gains rate.
It is frequently confused with the section 1250 recapture on buildings, which is capped at 25%. The two are different provisions with different rates, and a business sale can involve both at once.
This calculator models section 1250 recapture on real property. Section 1245 recapture on equipment is outside its scope.
Worked example
Computed by the same engine that powers the calculator, at the moment this page was built — not typed in by hand. Open the derivation to see every rule and citation.
A 2026 gain that the indexation actually helps
A single filer with $40,000 of wages realises a $20,000 long-term gain. The standard deduction and the widened 0% ceiling decide the outcome.
- Taxable income after deduction
- $43,900
- Taxable gain
- $20,000
- Tax owed without the sale
- $2,620
- Tax the sale added
- $0
- Total federal tax
- $2,620
- Effective rate on the gain
- 0%
Taxable income after the $16,100 deduction lands inside the $49,450 zero-rate ceiling, so the federal tax on this gain is nothing. On 2025 figures the same taxpayer would have been closer to the edge.
Caveats on this example (1)
- Net investment income was derived from capital gains and qualified dividends only. Interest, non-qualified dividends, rents, royalties and passive business income inside ordinaryIncome are also net investment income under IRC 1411(c) and are not counted here.
Show the working — 11 steps, each with its citation
- Net short-term capital gain or loss for the year$0
Assets held one year or less. Taxed at ordinary rates if a net gain.
- Net long-term capital gain or loss for the year$20,000
Assets held more than one year. Eligible for the 0/15/20% rates.
- Standard deduction-$16,100
Adjusted gross income of $60,000 less $16,100.
- Taxable income$43,900
The figure the rate tables and the capital gain ceilings are both measured against.
- Ordinary income taxed at 10%$1,240
$12,400 of taxable income between $0 and $12,400.
- Ordinary income taxed at 12%$1,380
$11,500 of taxable income between $12,400 and $23,900.
- Ordinary income stacked below the long-term gain$23,900
Long-term gain is taxed by reference to where it sits ON TOP of $23,900 of other taxable income, not from the bottom of the rate table.
- Long-term gain taxed at 0%$0
Taxable income stays at or below the $49,450 maximum zero-rate amount.
- Net investment income tax threshold$200,000
Modified AGI of $60,000 against the $200,000 threshold for a single filer. This threshold is statutory and is not adjusted for inflation.
- Net investment income tax does not apply$0
Modified AGI is $140,000 below the threshold.
- Total tax$2,620
$2,620 on $60,000 of total income, an effective rate of 4.37%.
Run your own figures
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