EITC 2027: The Projected Earned Income Credit Table, and 2026's

Every filing season, the earned income tax credit quietly becomes the largest single credit a lot of working families ever claim — bigger than the child tax credit for some, bigger than any deduction they’ll see on the return. And every year around this time, two different tax years start getting confused with each other. Tax year 2026, the one whose EITC table is now official and will show up on returns filed in early 2027, is set. Tax year 2027, the one whose numbers won’t be filed until 2028, is still a projection — but with August 2026’s inflation data now published, that projection can be built with real numbers instead of guesswork. The short answer: the 2027 maximum credit is projected at $7,552 for a family with two children, up from $7,316 in 2026, but unlike most of the figures in this site’s broader 2027 tax tracker, the exact EITC numbers depend on a methodology question the IRS hasn’t resolved — so this guide shows two columns, not one.

The 2026 EITC table, for returns filed in early 2027

Before touching anything projected, start with what’s already locked in. Revenue Procedure 2025-32, the IRS’s annual inflation-adjustment announcement, set the tax year 2026 earned income credit figures below. These are the numbers that will appear on returns filed starting in early 2027, and they don’t move.

The investment income limit — the ceiling on interest, dividends, and similar income a filer can have and still qualify at all, regardless of how low their earned income is — sits at $12,200 for 2026. Cross that line and the EITC is unavailable no matter how the rest of the table would otherwise apply.

How the statute builds this table

It helps to actually see the mechanism, because the same mechanism is what makes the 2027 projection possible before the IRS has said a word about it. Section 32 of the tax code splits the earned income credit into two kinds of numbers: rates that Congress fixed directly in the statute and never adjusts, and dollar amounts that move every year with inflation.

The rates live in section 32(b)(1), and they’re flat percentages applied to earned income, with no CPI adjustment at all. A filer with one qualifying child gets a 34% credit rate on their earned income, phased out at 15.98% once income crosses the relevant threshold. Two qualifying children bring a 40% credit rate and a 21.06% phaseout rate. Three or more children use a 45% credit rate with the same 21.06% phaseout rate as the two-child case. A filer with no qualifying children gets a 7.65% credit rate and a matching 7.65% phaseout rate — deliberately set equal to the combined employee-side Social Security and Medicare tax rate.

The dollar amounts are a different story. Section 32(b)(2)(A) sets the base “earned income amount” (the earnings level at which the credit stops growing and the maximum is reached) and the base “phaseout amount” (the income level where phasing out begins) — $6,330 and $11,610 for one child, $8,890 and $11,610 for two or more children, $4,220 and $5,280 for no children. Section 32(b)(2)(B) adds a further $5,000 to the phaseout amount specifically for married couples filing jointly, which is why the joint thresholds in the table above sit noticeably higher than the single and head-of-household thresholds. None of these base figures is the number that ends up on the table; each one is run through section 32(j)(1), the EITC’s own inflation-indexing instruction, which adjusts the main earned income and phaseout amounts using calendar year 1995 as the base year, and adjusts the extra $5,000 joint amount separately using calendar year 2008 as its own base year. A third figure, the $10,000 base for the investment income limit in section 32(i)(1), is indexed using calendar year 2020 as its base.

Rounding is where the arithmetic gets particular, and it’s also where the October 2025 gap turns out to matter. Section 32(j)(2)(A) rounds the indexed earned income and phaseout amounts — including the joint addition, after it’s been added in — to the nearest multiple of $10. Section 32(j)(2)(B) rounds the investment income limit down to the next lowest multiple of $50. The maximum credit itself isn’t separately indexed or separately rounded by the statute; it’s simply the fixed credit percentage multiplied by the (already indexed and rounded) earned income amount, landing on the nearest dollar. That relationship is worth holding onto, because it’s the check that confirms the whole table is internally consistent rather than just a list of numbers pulled from a press release.

Checking the method against 2026

Running the fixed 40% credit rate for two children against the confirmed 2026 earned income amount of $18,290 gives 40% × $18,290 = $7,316.00 — matching the official maximum credit exactly. The one-child case, 34% × $13,020, comes to $4,426.80, which rounds to the confirmed $4,427. The no-children case, 7.65% × $8,680, comes to $664.02, matching the confirmed $664. The three-or-more-children case, 45% × $18,290, comes to $8,230.50, which rounds up to the confirmed $8,231. A second check runs the other direction: adding the two-children maximum credit back to the phaseout threshold, divided by the 21.06% phaseout rate ($23,890 + $7,316 ÷ 0.2106), lands on $58,629 — the exact confirmed point where the credit reaches zero for a single two-child filer. The same check reproduces all four “credit reaches zero” figures for single filers in the table above, dollar for dollar. Beyond these specific multiplications, a single underlying CPI window value, in the range of 177.1105 to 177.1135, reproduces all twenty-four cells of the 2026 table plus the $12,200 investment income limit through the indexing and rounding steps described above — the same mechanism used for the 2027 projection below, not a different one built to fit a target.

The 2027 projected table — and why it needs two columns

The formula behind these figures runs on a twelve-month average of the chained CPI-U for all urban consumers, ending each August 31 — the identical window this site’s 2027 IRS inflation adjustments tracker follows for brackets, the standard deduction, and related figures. For the window that sets 2027’s numbers, that’s September 2025 through August 2026. The Bureau of Labor Statistics published the final month, August 2026, at 185.739 on the chained CPI-U index on September 11, 2026 — so the input data the formula needs is complete.

There’s a complication specific to this window, though, and it hits the EITC harder than most of the other figures in the 2027 tracker. The Bureau of Labor Statistics never published a CPI-U reading for October 2025; data collection stopped during that year’s government shutdown. Reconstructing a twelve-month average means either averaging the eleven months that do exist (giving a window value of 182.8565) or substituting an imputed estimate for the missing month (giving 182.6293) — a difference of roughly 0.12%. For a lot of tax figures, a 0.12% swing in the underlying index doesn’t change anything, because the final number is rounded to a coarse increment like $50 or $1,000 and both methods land in the same rounding bracket. The EITC’s main dollar amounts, though, round to the nearest $10 across a range running from roughly $8,000 to $25,000 — fine enough that a 0.12% difference in the window average moves nearly every figure by $10 to $30. That’s why this table needs two columns instead of one, where the commuter-benefit and several other 2027 projections on this site don’t.

The investment income limit is one of the few figures where the gap closes: it projects to $12,600 under both methods, up from $12,200 in 2026. The unrounded figures underneath are $12,626.98 (eleven-month average) and $12,611.30 (October imputed) — about $16 apart, not wide enough to cross the $50 rounding increment that this particular limit uses.

The size of the gap elsewhere is easiest to see in the “phaseout begins” line for a filer with children, filing as single or head of household: the unrounded figure behind it comes to $24,659.99 under the eleven-month average and $24,629.37 under the October-imputed method — genuinely close numbers that land ten dollars apart only because of where the nearest-$10 rounding line happens to fall. Applying the fixed credit rates to each column’s earned income amount reproduces every maximum-credit figure in the table above to the dollar: 34% of $13,450 is $4,573.00 and 34% of $13,430 is $4,566.20 (rounding to $4,566); 40% of $18,880 is $7,552.00 and 40% of $18,860 is $7,544.00; 45% of $18,880 is $8,496.00 and 45% of $18,860 is $8,487.00; 7.65% of $8,960 is $685.44 and 7.65% of $8,950 is $684.67 (both rounding to $685). None of this resolves which column becomes official — that’s the IRS’s call, expected in a revenue procedure between mid-October and November 2026 — but it confirms both columns are internally consistent applications of the same statutory formula, just fed slightly different raw CPI inputs.

What the credit is worth: three examples

The table is easier to read against real income numbers. Three cases, using the fixed rates and rounded thresholds above — and worth noting that the IRS’s own printed EIC Table, the lookup table taxpayers actually use on a return, sorts income into $50 bands rather than applying the formula to the exact dollar, so a return’s actual credit can differ by a few cents from the pure formula result below.

A single parent with two children, earning $20,000. In 2026, $20,000 falls between the $18,290 earned income amount and the $23,890 phaseout threshold, so the filer receives the full maximum credit: $7,316. In 2027, $20,000 still falls below both projected phaseout thresholds — $24,660 under the eleven-month average, $24,630 under the October-imputed method — so the filer again receives the full maximum credit in either case: $7,552 or $7,544, depending on which method the IRS adopts.

The same filer, earning $30,000. Now the phaseout is active in every version. In 2026: $7,316 − 21.06% × ($30,000 − $23,890) = $7,316 − 21.06% × $6,110 = $6,029.23. Under the 2027 eleven-month-average projection: $7,552 − 21.06% × ($30,000 − $24,660) = $7,552 − 21.06% × $5,340 = $6,427.40. Under the October-imputed projection: $7,544 − 21.06% × ($30,000 − $24,630) = $7,544 − 21.06% × $5,370 = $6,413.08. The two 2027 versions land about $14 apart at this income level — a small gap, but one that shows up directly in a real refund calculation, not just in a table cell.

A worker with no qualifying children, age 30, earning $10,000. In 2026, $10,000 sits between the $8,680 earned income amount and the $10,860 point where the credit reaches zero for this category, producing a partial credit of $664 minus the phaseout on the amount above $8,680 — which the confirmed 2026 table already prices at $664 for a filer near this income level under the IRS’s banded lookup table. In 2027, the same worker’s credit is projected at $685 under either CPI method, since the no-children maximum credit comes out identical both ways.

Who qualifies

The mechanics above only apply to filers who meet the underlying eligibility rules, and one set of those rules deserves particular attention because it trips up exactly the workers who’d benefit from the no-children EITC row in the table. Under 26 U.S.C. section 32(c)(1)(A)(ii), a filer with no qualifying children must be at least 25 and under 65 by the end of the tax year — for a married couple filing jointly, either spouse meeting the age range is enough — must have their main home in the United States for more than half the tax year, and cannot be claimed as a dependent on someone else’s return. These three conditions apply identically in the confirmed 2026 table and in both versions of the 2027 projection; nothing about the CPI methodology question touches eligibility, only the dollar amounts once eligibility is established.

The calendar from here

The 2026 table above is settled and applies to returns filed starting in early 2027. The 2027 projection in this guide applies to returns that won’t be filed until 2028, and it will firm up into a single column once the IRS issues its own revenue procedure for tax year 2027 — expected, based on the pattern of recent years, sometime between mid-October and November 2026. Until then, this guide’s two-column format is the most precise picture available: not a guess, but a complete run of the statutory formula against both ways of handling the one data point that never got published. Watch this site’s 2027 IRS inflation adjustments tracker for the revenue procedure itself and for how it resolves the same October 2025 question across other credits, including the parallel 2027 child tax credit projection. Filers checking their actual 2026 numbers this coming season should also see this site’s 2026 Form 1040 draft walkthrough and, since the EITC’s income tests ultimately run off the same underlying income figures used elsewhere on a return, this site’s explanation of modified adjusted gross income.

Sources

• 26 U.S.C. § 32 — law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/32
• 26 U.S.C. § 1(f)(3) — law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/26/1
• Rev. Proc. 2025-32, § 4.06 (2026 earned income credit figures) — irs.gov/pub/irs-drop/rp-25-32.pdf
• Bureau of Labor Statistics, Chained CPI-U series SUUR0000SA0 — api.bls.gov/publicAPI/v2/timeseries/data/
• finbarrow, IRS 2027 inflation adjustments tracker — companion page for the shared CPI window