With the astronomical costs for prescription drugs, it’s not unusual for us to hear from clients that the believe they should itemize their taxes based on their medical expenses. The truth is, even for a couple with multiple prescriptions from more than one pharmacy, most taxpayers do not have enough qualifying medical deductions to itemize under current rules.
The current threshold for standardized deductions is what helps us decide whether it makes sense for you to itemize. The best and fastest way to determine this is to have the total amounts of your categorized expenses.
There are cases, of course, where itemization may be warranted—for instance if you have experienced a catastrophic event where your out-of-pocket costs represent a significant portion of your income. Either way, We DO NOT need to see your receipts! Nor should we. ONLY THE TOTALS of these expenses are required, and in the interest of both protecting privacy of your medical information, and processing your return more quickly, we ask that you do not bring or send us your receipts. If the deduction for medical expenses is ever questioned, we would need to see the receipts at that time, but that would be the rare exception.
