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Yes, these expenses are deductible, but to do so you would have to be able to itemize deductions and your unreimbursed medical expenses would have to exceeds 7.5% of your adjusted gross income.
You can include in medical expenses the cost of the following procedures performed on yourself, your spouse, or your dependent to overcome an inability to have children.
Procedures such as in vitro fertilization (including temporary storage of eggs or sperm).
Surgery, including an operation to reverse prior surgery that prevented the person operated on from having children.
Please see the following: https://turbotax.intuit.com/tax-tips/health-care/can-i-claim-medical-expenses-on-my-taxes/L1htkVqq9
Unfortunately this is not a simple matter. Medical expenses are deductible to the extent that the treatment or procedure is needed to diagnose, treat, mitigate or cure a disease or other impairment of normal mind or body function.
To condense a long legal history into a couple of sentences, this means that, for example, IVF and surrogacy expenses for same-sex couples are not allowable medical expenses, because they are not required to diagnose, treat or cure a disease. However, if a woman is infertile by reason of a medical condition that makes her unable to conceive or carry a baby to term, then some or all of the expenses may be deductible. IVF and related procedures are also deductible if performed on the woman, to cause a pregnancy because the man is infertile.
You also can't deduct medical expenses for services performed on someone else's body. The law only says that you can deduct expenses for yourself, your spouse and your dependents. If you pay for a surrogate's medical care, or you pay a surrogate fee, those are never tax deductible on your return.
As you might expect, these rulings upset the LGBT community, and there have been proposals to change the tax law, but that hasn't happened yet, and the IRS follows the law that is written, not the law that might be.
You don't say your reason for pursuing IVF and surrogacy, so I can't really comment on the deductibility of your specific expenses. Here are two links that are dense, but seem accurate.
https://www.conceiveabilities.com/about/blog/which-surrogacy-expenses-are-tax-deductible
@DJS wrote:
Yes, these expenses are deductible,
Be careful, the taxpayer included "surrogate fees" in their question. These are not deductible under current court precedent and law.
Thank you very much for your help.
It depends. Some of the expenses may qualify within the current IRS fertility deductible medical expenses in Publication 502.
It is likely the majority fall outside of those as the deductibility of embryo storage is limited to temporary and no surrogacy expenses are allowed as deductible medical expenses. 2020 Deductible Fertility Medical Expenses
You could seek a Private Letter Ruling from the IRS to allow the deduction of these expenses in your specific case. You should seek professional guidance as this is a complex process and likely expensive, It may be worthwhile based on your expenses. Request a Private Letter Ruling
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