topic Do surgery expenses count? in Deductions & credits

Do surgery expenses count?

bohuang1230-hotm — Fri, 14 May 2021 03:11:14 GMT

Breast tumor surgery, breast reconstruction and so on.

Re: Do surgery expenses count?

Mike9241 — Fri, 14 May 2021 07:04:15 GMT

Breast tumor surgery, breast reconstruction - yes for both. so on - it depends.

see Schedule A instructions for what qualifies as medical expenses.

https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i1040sca.pdf

Re: Do surgery expenses count?

xmasbaby0 — Fri, 14 May 2021 13:16:42 GMT

When you enter medical expenses in TurboTax, it asks you a whole lot of questions to help you include everything that can be entered. Really what matters in the end is the total of all of it; that is what will go on your tax form, so don't get too frazzled trying to make sure everything is in the "right" category as long as you enter it all, and do not enter anything twice.

MEDICAL EXPENSES

The medical expense deduction has to meet a rather large threshold before it can affect your return. The amount of medical (including dental, vision, etc.) expenses that will count toward itemization is the amount that is OVER 7.5% of your adjusted gross income. You should only enter the amount that you paid in 2020—do not include any amounts that were covered by insurance or that are still outstanding. Of course, your medical expenses plus your other itemized deductions still have to exceed your standard deduction before you will see a difference in your tax due or refund.

To enter your medical expenses go to Federal>Deductions and Credits>Medical>Medical Expenses

Re: Do surgery expenses count?

Opus 17 — Fri, 14 May 2021 14:49:50 GMT

Deductible medical expenses are expenses paid to treat, cure, prevent or mitigate any disease or condition of the mind or body that affects its normal function. While breast enlargement for purely cosmetic reasons is not eligible, surgery to treat a tumor and reconstructive surgery afterward are certainly deductible medical expenses. (The fact that reconstruction is also partly cosmetic does not stop it from being deductible as part of the treatment or mitigation of a disease.)

Amounts you paid out of pocket are deductible. Amounts reimbursed by insurance, or paid from an HSA or FSA, are not deductible, because you already got a tax break for those payments.

As pointed out, Turbotax is programmed to ask for all your expenses, then to ask for all your reimbursements, and Turbotax will calculate the allowable deduction. I think this is needlessly complicated, but you should follow the program as designed so you don't run into any hiccups.