A pair of temporary clauses stopped applying on the last day of 2025, and Congress has not written anything to take their place. The live text of the statute still carries both of them, still labeled as running only through 2025, with no later amendment attached. What replaced them is the original 2010 subsidy structure, and a separate set of cost-sharing limits for 2027 that is roughly 13 percent higher than this year’s.
Two clauses that carried their own expiration dates
The enhanced subsidies were never permanent law. They were added as temporary subsections of the premium tax credit statute, first in 2021 and then extended once, and each was drafted with a window rather than a repeal date. One replaced the sliding scale of premium percentages. The other suspended the income ceiling on who could claim the credit at all.
Both windows read the same way in the current code: they apply to a taxable year beginning after December 31, 2020 and before January 1, 2026. The version of section 36B reflecting laws in effect on August 21, 2026 lists its most recent amendment as a July 4, 2025 statute, which means nothing enacted since has reopened either window. The credit itself continues; the enhancement layered on top of it does not.
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The 400 percent income ceiling is back in the definition
The sharper of the two changes is definitional. An applicable taxpayer, in the statute’s own words, is one whose household income “equals or exceeds 100 percent but does not exceed 400 percent” of the poverty line for a family of that size. The temporary rule that told the government to apply that sentence “without regard to” the 400 percent phrase expired with the 2025 tax year.
That produces a threshold rather than a taper. A household one dollar under the line qualifies for a credit; a household one dollar over it qualifies for none, regardless of what the premium costs relative to income. For an older couple buying marketplace coverage in their early sixties, that is the single most consequential sentence in the section, because premiums at that age are the highest the individual market charges and the credit is what previously kept them proportional to income.
$12,000 for one person and $24,000 for a family in 2027
A second figure moves for the 2027 benefit year, and this one is set by regulation rather than statute. CMS published the annual payment parameters on January 29, 2026 and fixed the maximum annual limitation on cost sharing at $12,000 for self-only coverage and $24,000 for anything other than self-only. The guidance describes that as an increase of approximately 13.2 percent over the 2026 parameters of $10,600 and $21,200.
The mechanism behind it is a premium adjustment percentage of 1.8916224814 for 2027, which reflects an increase of roughly 89.2 percent in private health insurance premiums between 2013 and 2026. That index is applied to the original 2014 limit of $6,350 and rounded down to the next lowest multiple of $50. The same document sets reduced limits for silver plan variations, at $4,000 for enrollees between 100 and 200 percent of poverty and $9,600 for those between 200 and 250 percent.
The cap on repaying excess advance credits is gone
A third change compounds the first two, and it is easy to miss because it lives in the reconciliation subsection. Advance credits are paid to an insurer during the year based on estimated income, then trued up at filing. For years, a taxpayer under 400 percent of poverty who had estimated too low owed back only a capped amount of the excess.
That cap no longer exists. The 2025 amendment struck the subparagraph that limited the increase in tax, and the current text of the reconciliation provision says only that the tax “shall be increased by the amount of such excess.” The change applies to taxable years beginning after December 31, 2025, which means the first filing season it touches is the one for 2026 income. A household whose earnings rose mid-year now repays the full difference.
The 2027 percentage table stops at 400 percent of poverty
The IRS published the replacement schedule on July 27, 2026. Revenue Procedure 2026-26 sets the applicable percentage table for taxable years beginning in 2027, and its final row reads “At least 300% but not more than 400%,” with both the initial and final percentage at 10.22 percent. There is no row above it, which is the clearest confirmation that the ceiling has returned.
The lower rows show the rest of the shape: 2.15 percent below 133 percent of poverty, 4.3 percent entering the 150-to-200 percent tier, 6.78 percent entering the 200-to-250 percent tier, and 8.66 percent entering the tier above that. The same revenue procedure sets the required contribution percentage for 2027 at 10.22 percent, the figure used to decide whether employer coverage counts as affordable. Both of those numbers, and the $12,000 ceiling, apply to plan years starting January 1, 2027.
This article was produced with AI assistance and reviewed by a human editor. Figures are linked to their primary sources; where a claim could not be verified from the public record, we say so.
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