Long-term capital gains tax brackets for 2026 set three federal rates — 0%, 15%, and 20% — and which one you pay depends on your filing status and total taxable income. A single filer stays at 0% up to $49,450 of taxable income, pays 15% from there to $545,500, and hits 20% above that. A married couple filing jointly gets the 0% rate up to $98,900, 15% up to $613,700, and 20% beyond. A gain qualifies for these rates only if you held the asset more than one year before selling.
What Counts as a Long-Term Gain
A capital gain is the profit from selling an asset for more than your adjusted basis, which is generally what you paid plus certain costs like improvements or reinvested dividends. Stocks, bonds, mutual funds, real estate, and cryptocurrency all count as capital assets.
The holding period is the gate to the long-term rates. You need to hold the asset for more than one year. The clock starts the day after you buy and runs through the day you sell. Sell on the one-year anniversary or earlier and the gain is short-term, which means it’s added to your ordinary income and taxed at your regular bracket, up to 37% for 2026.1Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 1222 – Other Terms Relating to Capital Gains and Losses2Internal Revenue Service. IRS Releases Tax Inflation Adjustments for Tax Year 2026 Hold one day beyond a year and you move into the long-term brackets below.
Inherited assets are a special case: they’re treated as long-term no matter how long the decedent owned them or how quickly you sell after inheriting.3Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 1223 – Holding Period of Property
2026 Long-Term Capital Gains Brackets by Filing Status
These thresholds are adjusted for inflation each year. The figures below apply to the 2026 tax year, for returns filed in 2027.2Internal Revenue Service. IRS Releases Tax Inflation Adjustments for Tax Year 2026
Single filers
- 0% on taxable income up to $49,450
- 15% from $49,451 to $545,500
- 20% above $545,500
Married filing jointly
- 0% on taxable income up to $98,900
- 15% from $98,901 to $613,700
- 20% above $613,700
Head of household
- 0% on taxable income up to $66,200
- 15% from $66,201 to $579,600
- 20% above $579,600
Married filing separately
- 0% on taxable income up to $49,450
- 15% from $49,451 to $306,850
- 20% above $306,850
“Taxable income” here means your total income after deductions, including both the ordinary income and the capital gains themselves. That matters because of how the brackets interact with the rest of your income.
How Your Ordinary Income Decides the Rate
You don’t look at the gain in isolation. Your ordinary income — wages, interest, pension, Social Security that’s taxable, and so on — fills the brackets first. The long-term gain stacks on top. Where the gain lands in the table decides the rate on each slice of it.
A worked example. A single filer in 2026 earns $40,000 in wages and realizes a $20,000 long-term gain. The $40,000 of ordinary income sits in the lower brackets. The 0% long-term bracket runs up to $49,450, so the first $9,450 of the gain is taxed at 0%. The remaining $10,550 falls into the 15% bracket. Federal tax on the gain works out to roughly $1,583.
This stacking is why some retirees with modest income pay zero federal tax on investment gains, and why timing a sale into a lower-income year can shift more of the gain into the 0% band.
The 3.8% Surtax on Higher Incomes
The 0/15/20 rates aren’t the whole federal picture at higher income levels. The Net Investment Income Tax adds 3.8% on top of long-term gains once your modified adjusted gross income crosses a fixed threshold:4Internal Revenue Service. Topic No. 559, Net Investment Income Tax
- $250,000 for married filing jointly
- $200,000 for single or head of household
- $125,000 for married filing separately
These thresholds are not indexed for inflation and have not moved since the tax took effect in 2013. The 3.8% applies to the lesser of your net investment income or the amount your MAGI exceeds the threshold. A taxpayer already in the 20% long-term bracket who also owes the NIIT faces an effective federal rate of 23.8% on long-term gains.
Assets That Don’t Follow the 0/15/20 Rates
A few categories of long-term gains sit outside the standard brackets, so the table above won’t give you the right answer for them.
Collectibles — artwork, antiques, coins, precious metals, stamps and the like — are capped at a 28% maximum long-term rate.5Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 1 – Tax Imposed6Internal Revenue Service. Topic No. 409, Capital Gains and Losses If your income would put you in the 15% long-term band, you still pay 15% on collectibles. The 28% figure only bites when regular gains would otherwise be taxed at 20%.
Depreciated real estate carries a 25% maximum rate on the portion of the gain attributable to depreciation you previously claimed, known as unrecaptured Section 1250 gain. If you bought a rental for $300,000, claimed $80,000 in depreciation, and sold for $400,000, the $80,000 depreciation piece is taxed up to 25% and the remaining $100,000 of gain follows the standard 0/15/20 rates.
Qualified small business stock under Section 1202 can be excluded from federal tax entirely — up to the greater of $10 million or ten times your basis — if you hold stock in a qualifying domestic C corporation for more than five years and the company met a $50 million gross-assets test when the stock was issued, among other requirements.7Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 1202 – Partial Exclusion for Gain From Certain Small Business Stock Any portion of a Section 1202 gain that isn’t excluded is capped at 28%.
Your primary residence gets its own exclusion. If the home was your main residence for at least two of the five years before the sale, you can exclude up to $250,000 of gain if single or $500,000 if married filing jointly, and you can use the exclusion only once every two years.8Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 121 – Exclusion of Gain From Sale of Principal Residence Anything above the exclusion is taxed at the standard long-term rates.
Losses Reduce the Gain Before Any Rate Applies
Capital losses offset capital gains before the brackets come into play. Short-term offsets short-term and long-term offsets long-term first; any remaining net loss in one category then offsets a net gain in the other.6Internal Revenue Service. Topic No. 409, Capital Gains and Losses If losses still exceed gains, you can deduct up to $3,000 of the net loss against ordinary income ($1,500 if married filing separately), and anything beyond that carries forward to future years with no expiration, keeping its short- or long-term character.
State Tax Changes the Full Rate
The federal rate isn’t your total rate. Most states tax capital gains as ordinary income, with top state rates running from 0% in no-income-tax states to over 13% in the highest. Only a handful give long-term gains preferential treatment. Before a large sale, check how your state treats the gain, because the combined federal and state number can look very different from the federal figure alone.