How to Fill Out Form 8962 for the Premium Tax Credit

To fill out Form 8962 for the Premium Tax Credit, you pull the monthly premium, benchmark plan, and advance payment figures from your Form 1095-A, calculate your household modified adjusted gross income, and work through Parts 1 and 2 to compare the credit you actually qualify for against what the Marketplace already paid your insurer. If the advance payments were too high, Part 3 tells you how much to repay. Most filers only touch the first three parts; Parts 4 and 5 exist for shared policies and mid-year marriages.

The form attaches to your Form 1040, 1040-SR, or 1040-NR, and you have to file it if any advance premium tax credit was paid on your behalf, even if your income is low enough that you wouldn’t otherwise need to file a return.¹

Gather These Documents First

Form 1095-A

The Marketplace sends Form 1095-A by the end of January. Every dollar figure on Form 8962 traces back to it, so don’t file without it in hand. You can also download it from your HealthCare.gov account. Three columns carry the numbers you’ll transfer onto Form 8962:²

Column A: your monthly enrollment premium.
Column B: the second lowest cost silver plan premium, which is the benchmark used to calculate the credit.
Column C: the advance credit payments sent to your insurer each month.

Check these numbers before you go any further. If they’re wrong, everything downstream on Form 8962 will be wrong too.

Your Household MAGI

Form 8962 uses modified adjusted gross income. Start with the adjusted gross income from Form 1040 (line 11a) and add back three items:¹

Tax-exempt interest.
Foreign earned income excluded on Form 2555.
The nontaxable portion of Social Security benefits.

If you claim dependents whose income is high enough that they’re required to file their own return, add their MAGI too. Dependents filing only to recover withheld tax don’t count.¹ The combined number is your household income for the credit.

Family Size and the Poverty Guidelines

Your tax family size is you, your spouse (if filing jointly), and every dependent you claim. You’ll pull the federal poverty level for that family size from the tables in the Form 8962 instructions. The form uses the prior year’s poverty guidelines, so the 2025 Form 8962 references the 2024 figures.¹ Alaska and Hawaii use higher amounts.

Part 1: Your Expected Contribution

Part 1 figures out how much you’re expected to pay toward premiums before the credit kicks in. On lines 1 through 5, enter family size, your household MAGI (with any dependent MAGI on line 2b), the applicable poverty level, and let the form calculate your income as a percentage of the poverty line.³ That percentage drives everything that follows.

Line 7 uses that percentage to look up your “applicable figure” from Table 2 in the instructions. Under the base statutory formula that applies for 2026, the fractions run from about 2% of income near the poverty level up to 9.5% near 400% of the poverty level.⁴ The lower rates that applied from 2021 through 2025 under the enhanced subsidies no longer apply. Use the table in whichever year’s instructions match your tax year.

Multiply household income by the applicable figure for your annual contribution (line 8a), then divide by 12 for the monthly amount (line 8b). Your monthly credit is the benchmark silver plan premium minus that monthly contribution, or your actual premium, whichever is less.

Part 2: Reconcile the Credit With Advance Payments

Part 2 is where the reconciliation actually happens. For each coverage month, you’re comparing the credit you were entitled to against what the Marketplace already sent your insurer.

If your coverage and household stayed constant all year, line 11 lets you use annual totals. Otherwise, lines 12 through 23 require entries for each month. Transfer Column A (premium), Column B (benchmark), and Column C (advance payment) from your Form 1095-A into the matching month on Form 8962.⁵

Line 24 totals your allowed credit for the year. Line 25 totals the advance payments. The comparison decides the outcome:

If line 24 is larger, you get the difference as additional credit on line 26, which flows to Form 1040 and either increases your refund or reduces the tax you owe.
If line 25 is larger, you received too much in advance. The excess goes on line 27, and Part 3 handles the repayment.

The usual reason the numbers don’t match is that your actual income landed somewhere different from what you estimated when you enrolled. A raise, a bonus, or added household income shrinks the credit and can leave you owing money back.

Part 3: Repaying Excess Advance Payments

If line 27 shows an excess, Part 3 sets the repayment. This is where a major change matters. For tax years 2021 through 2025, the IRS capped repayment for households under 400% of the poverty level at amounts ranging from $375 to $3,250 depending on income and filing status.⁵ For the 2026 tax year, those caps are gone. You repay the full excess regardless of income.⁶

The repayment from line 29 carries to Schedule 2 (Form 1040), line 1a, and adds to your total tax.⁷ An expected refund can flip to a balance due. Reporting income changes to the Marketplace during the year is the way to avoid a large surprise here.

One boundary worth naming: if your household income comes in above 400% of the federal poverty level, you cannot claim the credit at all and must repay every dollar of advance payments.⁸

Part 4: Shared Policy Allocation

Skip Part 4 unless a single Marketplace policy covered people in more than one tax household during the year. The typical case is divorced or separated parents with children enrolled on one parent’s policy but claimed as dependents by the other. Both tax households split the premiums, benchmark amounts, and advance payments across their respective Form 8962 filings.¹

The allocation percentages have to add up to 100% and are ideally agreed on by both parties. If you can’t agree, the instructions provide default rules for divorce, legal separation, and married filing separately.

Part 5: Alternative Calculation for the Year of Marriage

Skip Part 5 unless you got married during the tax year. It’s an optional calculation, and it often reduces the excess repayment. Before the wedding, advance payments were sized to each spouse’s individual income estimate; combining incomes on a joint return frequently shrinks the credit and creates excess payments. The alternative calculation takes a month-by-month approach for the pre-marriage months that can lower the repayment.¹ Worksheets in the instructions carry you through each step. With repayment caps gone for 2026, running the alternative calculation is more valuable than it used to be.

A Note for Married Filers

To claim the credit as a married taxpayer, you generally have to file jointly. Filing separately disqualifies you, with two narrow exceptions: you qualify to file as head of household under the “married persons who live apart” rules, or you certify on Form 8962 that you’re a victim of domestic abuse or spousal abandonment. The abuse and abandonment exception has a three-year consecutive limit.¹ If neither exception applies and you file separately, you still owe back any advance payments made for you.

Attach and File the Form

Form 8962 attaches to Form 1040, 1040-SR, or 1040-NR.¹ Most tax software builds it for you once you enter the 1095-A data and links it to your return. On paper, place it directly behind the main return with your other schedules.

Enrollment premiums generally have to be paid by the unextended due date of the return (typically April 15) for those months to count toward the credit. A tax extension gives you more time to file, but it doesn’t change the premium payment deadline.¹ Unpaid premium months reduce the credit calculation.

If Your Form 1095-A Looks Wrong

Don’t file with bad numbers. If the premium, benchmark plan, or advance payment figures on Form 1095-A don’t look right, call the Marketplace Call Center at 1-800-318-2596 and request a correction. The Marketplace will investigate, issue a corrected 1095-A if warranted, and report the updated numbers to the IRS. Corrected forms also appear in your HealthCare.gov account.

Minor demographic mistakes like a misspelled name don’t require a new form and can be handled when you file. Dollar amounts have to be right before you use them on Form 8962. Filing with wrong figures means amending later, which adds months of processing.

What Happens If You Skip Form 8962

Two problems, and the second is worse.

First, the IRS holds your refund and sends Letter 12C asking for the missing form and a copy of your Form 1095-A. You have 20 days to respond.⁹ Until the IRS gets what it asked for, the return sits.

Second, the Marketplace flags your household as failing to file and reconcile. Everyone in the tax household loses eligibility for advance premium tax credits and cost-sharing reductions in future plan years, meaning full-price premiums until you go back, file the missing return, reconcile, and attest to it on your Marketplace application.¹⁰ Eligibility restores after that, with a special enrollment period to apply the credits going forward. The gap in between comes out of your pocket.

1
Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Form 8962 (2025)
2
Internal Revenue Service. 2025 Instructions for Form 1095-A Health Insurance Marketplace Statement
3
Internal Revenue Service. Form 8962 (2025)
4
Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 36B – Refundable Credit for Coverage Under a Qualified Health Plan
5
Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Form 8962 (2025)
6
Internal Revenue Service. Updates to Questions and Answers About the Premium Tax Credit
7
Internal Revenue Service. 2025 Schedule 2 (Form 1040)
8
Internal Revenue Service. Eligibility for the Premium Tax Credit
9
Internal Revenue Service. Understanding Your Letter 12C
10
Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. Taxes, Exemptions, Reconciling Advance Payments of the Premium Tax Credit, and Failure to File and Reconcile