Two Medicare late enrollment penalties are described the same way in almost every summary: sign up late, pay more for life. They are built on different units. The Part D drug penalty counts single months and multiplies them by a premium figure that the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services resets every year. The Part B medical penalty counts only completed twelve-month periods and multiplies them by a much larger premium. For 2026 the two base figures are $38.99 and $202.90. What follows is what each formula does with the same gap, and why one of them costs a different amount every January while the gap behind it does not change. What Starts the Part D Count The condition is not lateness in general. The Medicare drug coverage cost page states: “You may owe a late enrollment penalty if at any time after your Initial Enrollment Period is over, there’s a period of 63 or more days in a row when you don’t have Medicare drug coverage or other creditable prescriptio...
For the 2026 tax year the IRS raised the annual limit on contributions to a traditional or Roth IRA to $7,500, and set the deduction phase-out range for a single filer covered by a workplace plan at $81,000 to $91,000. Both figures come from IRS Notice 2025-67, announced in the IRS news release on 2026 retirement plan limits. Between them sit two numbers no tax form prints. The first is the income figure actually compared against the range, which is not the adjusted gross income at the bottom of the return. The second is the reduced deduction, which IRS Publication 590-A does not produce as a straight proportion: it rounds the answer up, and it refuses to let the answer fall below $200 while any of the range remains. Coverage at Work Decides Whether the Income Test Runs at All The phase-out is conditional, and the condition is not income. IRS Publication 590-A, in the edition for use in preparing 2025 returns, splits the question across two tables, one headed “Effect of Modifie...