Deductions & credits
If your standard deduction is greater than your itemized deduction, after you walk through and enter all of your itemized expenses, you will come to a screen that says your standard deduction is greater than your itemized expenses so it is giving you the standard deduction.
Not all of what you enter is deductible. If you enter $10,000 in medical expenses and your AGI is $100,000, then you would only get a medical expense deduction of $2,500 because medical expenses are only deductible for the amount that is over 7.5% of your AGI.
State and Local taxes that you paid, are capped at $10,000. So even if you paid in $20,000 between property taxes and income taxes, it is limited to $10,000.
Charitable contributions can also be limited to somewhere between 20% to 60% of your AGI depending on the type of organization.
Itemized expenses include mortgage interest, charitable contributions, gambling losses up to your winnings, state and local taxes up to $10,000, medical expenses in excess of 7.5% of your AGI and casualty and losses in excess of 10% of you AGI with the first $100 not counting towards the loss.
Then your total itemized expenses would need to be greater than your standard deduction below in order to benefit from your insurance premium payments.
So if you are seeing a better tax liability with the standard deduction than you are with your Itemized deductions, it is likely because the limitations on the itemized deductions reduced their value to below the standard deduction.
You can look at 12 of your 1040 to see how much you are getting for either deduction when you force the deduction versus the standard deduction.
The 2023 Standard Deductions are as follows:
- Married Filing Joint (MFJ) $27,700
- Married Filing Separate (MFS) $13,850
- Head of Household (HOH) $20,800
- Single $13,850
Blind and MFJ or MFS add $1,500
Single or HOH if blind add $1,850
Standard versus Itemized Deduction
Pub 526 Charitable Contributions
On the menu bar on the left that shows.
- Select Tax Tools
- On the drop-down select Tools
- On the pop-up menu
- Select View Tax Summary
- On the left sidebar, select Preview my 1040
If you are using the online version and have already paid, you can go to the print center and look at your Schedule A to see your exact numbers in each category.
If you are using the desktop version, you can switch to forms mode to see your 1040 form and your schedule A for a better breakdown.
