Tax season is upon us, and today’s question relates to itemization when it comes to getting deductions. Should you itemize your taxes?

Look, I’m not a CPA, I’m a financial planner, but the IRS has actually done a lot of work over the last couple years, trying to get people to no longer itemize their taxes. It creates a big strain on the on the IRS come tax time, and it’s also a heck of a lot more work for you when it actually comes to filing those taxes.

Standard Tax Deduction

Some of the things they’ve done to get people to no longer itemize are pretty simple. The biggest thing is, they’ve just doubled the standard deduction. For last year, 2022 tax year, which are the taxes you’re filing right now, if you were a married couple filing joint taxes in our country, you could get a standard deduction close to $26,000. Not to mention on top of that, if you’re over 65, throw another $1300 on top of that.

State and Local Tax Deductions

What they’ve also done is really capped the state and local tax deductions that you used to be able to take maybe 10-12 years ago. You used to be able to deduct your mortgage taxes, and your property taxes. What they’ve done as of late is they’ve actually capped that number at $10,000 so as a result, you don’t have these high amount of deductible expenses that you used to have in the past.

Hopefully this information addresses some of the concerns that you might have when it comes to whether or not you should be itemizing come tax time. Thanks for joining me!

P.S. If you enjoyed this topic and want to learn more, download your copy of our guide, “Tax Strategies for Retirement“.

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