Federal relief checks

[ZTaxesfile5]

Received a federal tax relief check and live in Virginia. In Virginia those special 2022 payments can be excluded from federal income taxes - except for filers itemizing tax deductions. My question then, if I can claim the SALT is that more advantageous than not itemizing and being able to exclude that relief check as taxable?

[HelenC12]

You may have to include the federal relief check in your income if you itemized your deductions in tax year 2021 not what you're going to do on your 2022 income tax return.

• However, you can always enter each scenario in TurboTax to see the difference (itemized deductions versus standard deduction). Make sure you save your .tax file for each of the scenarios. See How do I save my TurboTax Online return as a tax data file?

Per IRS: Refund of state taxes paid: If the payment is a refund of state taxes paid and either the recipient claimed the standard deduction or itemized their deductions but did not receive a tax benefit (for example, because the $10,000 tax deduction limit applied) the payment is not included in income for federal tax purposes.

Payments from the following states in 2022 fall in this category and will be excluded from income for federal tax purposes unless the recipient received a tax benefit in the year the taxes were deducted.

• Georgia
• Massachusetts
• South Carolina
• Virginia