If your Form 1095-A has incorrect information, contact the Marketplace that issued it and ask for a corrected form. The Marketplace is the only entity that can change what appears on a 1095-A. The IRS cannot fix it, and neither can your insurance company. What you do next depends on whether you’ve filed yet, how close you are to the deadline, and whether the error means you owe more tax or are due more back.
Find the Error Before You Call
The form has three parts, and mistakes can hide in any of them.
Part I lists your personal information along with the policy start date and, if applicable, the termination date. Check these against your original enrollment confirmation and any cancellation notice. A wrong start or end date shifts which months count toward your credit.
Part II names the individuals covered under the policy. A missing dependent, a name in the wrong place, or someone listed who shouldn’t be there will throw off the credit calculation because it no longer matches your actual household.
Part III is where the money lives. Each month has three columns:
- Column A shows the monthly enrollment premium, meaning the full premium before any subsidy. It should match your insurer’s billing statements, not the lower amount you actually paid.
- Column B shows the Second Lowest Cost Silver Plan (SLCSP) premium, the benchmark used on Form 8962 to figure your credit. The Marketplace generates this from your household information, so your own bills don’t reveal it.
- Column C shows the advance premium tax credit paid, meaning the monthly subsidy sent directly to your insurer.
The SLCSP in Column B has the largest effect on your credit and is the hardest to verify from your own records. The IRS instructions for Form 8962 flag two situations where the SLCSP is often wrong: when no advance payments were made for your coverage, and when you had a life change during the year (a new baby, a move, gaining or losing other coverage) that you never reported to the Marketplace.1Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Form 8962
Once you’ve pinned down the specific part, column, and month, write down both the figure on the form and what you believe it should be. You’ll need those details when you call.
Verify the SLCSP With the Healthcare.gov Tool
Because the SLCSP doesn’t appear on any statement you’d normally keep, the Marketplace provides an online tool to check it. If you enrolled through the federal Marketplace, use the Healthcare.gov tax tool, enter your household information for the year, and it will return your correct monthly SLCSP figures.2HealthCare.gov. Health Coverage Tax Tool The Form 8962 instructions direct taxpayers to this tool whenever the SLCSP on the 1095-A is wrong, blank, or reported as zero.1Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Form 8962
State-based Marketplaces may have their own tools. If yours doesn’t, IRS Publication 974 walks through how to determine the correct SLCSP manually.
Running the tool matters beyond confirming the mistake. If the Marketplace is slow to issue a corrected form or disagrees with your claim, the tool’s output gives you a defensible number to use on your return. That backup matters because you cannot appeal a Marketplace decision about your 1095-A through the standard appeals process. Healthcare.gov explicitly excludes 1095-A disagreements from its appeals system.3HealthCare.gov. What Can I Appeal? If the Marketplace won’t correct what you believe is wrong, using the tool or Publication 974 to calculate the correct figures and filing with those is your recourse.
Request the Corrected Form
Contact the Marketplace that issued the form. For the federal Marketplace, call 800-318-2596 or log in to your Healthcare.gov account. If you enrolled through a state-based exchange, go to that state’s Marketplace.4Internal Revenue Service. Corrected, Incorrect or Voided Form 1095-A Have your policy number, the tax year, and the specific error ready before you call.
Be specific about what’s wrong. Saying “my SLCSP for March through June in Part III, Column B shows $450 when it should be $520” gets you further than “the numbers look off.” The representative will open a data investigation and compare your claim against their records.
If the Marketplace confirms the mistake, they’ll issue a corrected Form 1095-A. This often takes several weeks. Get a case or reference number before you hang up, and ask whether the corrected form will be mailed or posted to your online account. A phone conversation doesn’t support a tax return; only the corrected document does.
Corrected vs. Voided
A replacement form will have either a “CORRECTED” or “VOID” box checked at the top, and the difference matters.
A corrected form means the original had errors and the new version replaces it with accurate data. If you haven’t filed, use the corrected form. If you have, compare the new numbers to the originals to see whether they change your tax.4Internal Revenue Service. Corrected, Incorrect or Voided Form 1095-A
A voided form means the original should never have been issued, usually because enrollment was never completed or premiums were never paid. Neither the voided form nor the original should be used to claim a Premium Tax Credit. If you already filed using the original and then receive a voided version, the IRS says to file an amended return.4Internal Revenue Service. Corrected, Incorrect or Voided Form 1095-A
If You Haven’t Filed Yet
If the corrected form hasn’t arrived and April is close, you have two options.
Extend
Filing Form 4868 gives you until October 15 to submit your return without a late-filing penalty.5Internal Revenue Service. Get an Extension to File Your Tax Return This is the cleaner path when you’re waiting on a corrected 1095-A, because it lets you file once with accurate numbers instead of twice.
The extension gives you more time to file, not more time to pay. If you expect to owe, estimate the amount and pay by the April deadline. Unpaid tax accrues a failure-to-pay penalty of 0.5% of the balance per month, capped at 25%.6Internal Revenue Service. Failure to Pay Penalty The IRS also charges interest on unpaid balances: 7% annually (compounded daily) for the first quarter of 2026, dropping to 6% for the second.7Internal Revenue Service. Quarterly Interest Rates Even a rough payment beats paying nothing.
File With Estimates
If you need your refund now and an extension won’t work, file using your best estimate. Reconstruct the premium and SLCSP amounts from insurance bills, the Healthcare.gov tax tool output, and any Marketplace correspondence. Put those figures on Form 8962.
This carries risk. If your estimates don’t match what the Marketplace eventually reports to the IRS, you may receive a CP2000 notice flagging the discrepancy.8Internal Revenue Service. Topic No. 652, Notice of Underreported Income – CP2000 You’d then respond to the notice or amend once the corrected form arrives. Filing with estimates and later amending is doing the work twice, so choose this path only when extending isn’t realistic.
If You Already Filed
The IRS rule is more forgiving than most people expect. If you filed with an incorrect Form 1095-A and later receive a corrected version, you are generally not required to amend, even if the correction means you owe additional tax.4Internal Revenue Service. Corrected, Incorrect or Voided Form 1095-A
You’ll usually want to amend when the correction is in your favor, because the IRS won’t send you a larger refund on its own. Situations where amending is worth the effort:
- The corrected SLCSP is higher, which generally increases your credit and means you were refunded too little or paid too much.
- The corrected enrollment premium is lower, which may reduce excess advance payments you were asked to repay.
- You received a voided 1095-A after filing, in which case you need to amend to remove the Premium Tax Credit from your return entirely.
To amend, file Form 1040-X with a recalculated Form 8962 using the corrected 1095-A figures. You can e-file the 1040-X through tax software for the current year or the two prior tax years, or submit it on paper with the corrected 1095-A and revised Form 8962 attached.9Internal Revenue Service. About Form 1040-X, Amended U.S. Individual Income Tax Return
You have three years from the date you filed the original return, or two years from the date you paid the tax, whichever is later, to file an amended return and claim a refund.10Internal Revenue Service. Time You Can Claim a Credit or Refund Waiting too long forfeits money you’re owed.
Why Accuracy Matters More Starting in 2026
Getting your 1095-A right is more financially consequential than it used to be. Before 2026, taxpayers whose household income fell below 400% of the federal poverty line had a cap on how much excess advance Premium Tax Credit they had to repay. If you received more in advance subsidies than you qualified for, the repayment was limited to a set amount based on your income bracket.
That cap is gone. Public Law 119-21 eliminated the repayment limitation for tax years beginning after December 31, 2025.11Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 U.S. Code 36B – Refundable Credit for Coverage Under a Qualified Health Plan Starting with your 2026 return, if the Marketplace overpaid your advance credit based on incorrect information, you owe back every dollar of the excess with no ceiling. A wrong income estimate, an inaccurate SLCSP, or coverage dates that don’t match reality can translate into a repayment with no cap on it.
A moderate error that might have been absorbed by the repayment cap in prior years won’t be in 2026. That’s the reason to check the form even when the numbers look roughly right.
Penalties and Interest If You End Up Owing
If a corrected 1095-A shows you owe more (because the advance credit was too generous, or the SLCSP was lower than reported), penalties and interest may apply to the unpaid balance.
The failure-to-pay penalty runs at 0.5% of the unpaid amount per month or fraction of a month, up to 25%.12Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 U.S. Code 6651 – Failure to File Tax Return or to Pay Tax Interest runs on top: 7% per year (compounded daily) for the first quarter of 2026, adjusting each quarter.7Internal Revenue Service. Quarterly Interest Rates Both apply at the same time, so an unpaid balance grows faster than either rate alone suggests.
If you amend and owe more, include payment with your 1040-X to stop both the penalty and the interest clock. Paying whatever you can, even if it’s not the full amount, still reduces the base on which penalties accumulate. Filing the amendment before the IRS catches the discrepancy also helps: the IRS generally does not impose the failure-to-pay penalty on amounts you voluntarily correct before a notice is issued.