Medical & Dental Expenses

If you are itemizing your deductions (using Schedule A), you can report your medical and dental expenses. The amount of your total medical expenses must exceed 7.5% of your adjusted gross income.

The IRS states that all medical care expenses include payments for the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease, or payments for treatments affecting any structure or function of the body.

The following expenses are allowable:

• Fees for doctors, dentists, surgeons, chiropractors, psychiatrists, psychologists, and other medical practitioners
• Inpatient hospital care or residential nursing home care
• Acupuncture treatments
• Inpatient treatment at a center for alcohol or drug addiction, or smoking-cessation programs that require a prescription.
• Weight-loss program for diseases such as obesity as long as a physician diagnoses these diseases
• Drugs that require prescription such as insulin
• Necessary admission and transportation fees to a medical conference for a chronic illness
• False teeth
• Reading or prescription eyeglasses or contact lenses
• Hearing aids
• Crutches or wheelchairs,
• Service animal fees to assist a person with physical disabilities
• Payments for insurance premiums you paid for policies that cover medical care or for a qualified long-term care insurance policy covering qualified long-term care services

As a reminder, you cannot deduct medical and dental expenses if it is for purely cosmetic reasons.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 16th, 2020 at 4:54 pm and is filed under Deductions. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.