About
About IRMAA Cliff
IRMAA Cliff is a free, independent planner for one narrow but expensive problem: the Medicare income limits that raise your Part B and Part D premiums by a full tier for one dollar over.
Why this site exists
Every fall, many retirees open a letter from Social Security telling them their Medicare premiums are going up because of income they earned two years earlier. Most of the information available online stops at a table of brackets. A table tells you which tier you are in, but not the thing you actually need to plan: how far you are from the next limit, and what a Roth conversion, a home sale or a required distribution would do to it.
So we built the site around that distance. The calculator shows your income on a step chart of premiums, the headroom before the next cliff, and the yearly cost of crossing it. The Roth headroom finder turns the same idea into a single number you can act on. The appeal checklist helps people whose income really did drop find out whether Form SSA-44 fits their situation.
Who we are
IRMAA Cliff is published by a small independent editorial team that builds focused, single-purpose financial tools. We are not a bank, an insurer, a broker, or a government agency, and we do not sell Medicare plans. We are not affiliated with Medicare, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services or the Social Security Administration.
We write for readers, many of them in their 60s and 70s, who want plain answers backed by official sources, and we design the site to be easy to read: large type, a typeface built for legibility, and no pop-ups.
How we keep the numbers right
Every premium and income limit lives in one data file, with the official source and the date someone last checked it against that source. The calculators and the examples in our guides read from the same figures, so a number cannot be right in one place and wrong in another. When Medicare announces new figures, usually in the fall, we update the data within a week and mark any projected figure clearly until it becomes official. Details of every number, formula and source are on our methodology and sources page.
Your privacy
The calculators run entirely in your browser. The income you type is never sent to us or stored anywhere. We do not have accounts, sign-up forms or a newsletter. See the privacy policy for how advertising cookies work on the site.
How the site is funded
IRMAA Cliff is free to use. It is funded by advertising served by Google and, in the future, by affiliate links to services such as financial advisor matching or tax software, always labeled. Advertisers and partners have no influence over our calculations or what we write. Our affiliate disclosure explains how that works.
What we do not do
We explain how IRMAA works and help you estimate it. We do not give individual tax, legal or financial advice, we do not fill in or file government forms, and Social Security makes every IRMAA decision. For large decisions, talk with a tax professional or a fee-only financial planner. Read the full disclaimer.
Get in touch
Found an error, or have a suggestion? We read every message. Visit the contact page.