IRMAA appeal

The seven life-changing events

Social Security counts only these, from its own regulation. The event has to be what lowered your income, and the drop has to be large enough to lower or remove your IRMAA.

1. Your spouse died.
2. You married.
3. Your marriage ended in divorce or annulment.
4. You or your spouse stopped working or cut back your hours.
5. You or your spouse lost income-producing property through no choice of your own and not through ordinary investment risk: a declared disaster, arson, crops or livestock lost to disaster or disease, or fraud or theft by a third party.
6. An employer’s pension plan was scheduled to stop, ended or was reorganized.
7. You or your spouse got a settlement from an employer that closed, went bankrupt or reorganized.

Not counted: anything that raises your expenses without changing your income, and dividends or gains lost to ordinary market moves. A Roth conversion, a large IRA withdrawal or a home sale that pushed your income up is not an event either, so a year like that cannot be appealed on Form SSA-44.

When a spouse dies

The year a spouse dies, the survivor can still file a joint return. From the next year the survivor usually files as single, and the single lines are half the joint ones: for 2026 premiums IRMAA starts above $109,000 single against $218,000 joint. A widow or widower whose premiums are still based on the couple’s joint return two years back can use Form SSA-44 with the death as the event and their own, lower income for the more recent year.

How to file

1. Fill in Form SSA-44: the event and its date, and your MAGI for the year you want used, usually the current year.
2. Attach your filed tax return for that year if you have one. If not, an estimate under penalty of perjury is accepted, and Social Security checks it later against the return the IRS receives.
3. Add proof of the event when Social Security does not already have it: a death or marriage certificate, a divorce decree, an employer’s letter or your signed statement about stopping work, an insurance claim for lost property, a pension administrator’s statement.
4. Send it to your local Social Security office, by mail or in person, or call 1-800-772-1213 to make the request.

If Social Security agrees, it redoes the determination with the more recent year and adjusts the premiums for the year you asked about. When that year’s return later shows a different MAGI, the amount is corrected again.

When the IRS figures are wrong

If Social Security used the wrong year, a return that was later amended, or a filing status or MAGI the IRS has since corrected, you ask for a new determination with that proof: the return, the amended return with the IRS letter that received it, or the IRS correction. If you disagree with the decision itself, ask for a reconsideration (Form SSA-561) within 60 days of the notice.

The 2026 brackets are in IRMAA brackets 2026, and the lines income this year will be measured against are in IRMAA brackets 2027.

Calculations, not tax, legal or investment advice.