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Standard vs Itemized Deductions

Add up mortgage interest, state and local tax, charity and medical costs to see whether itemizing beats the standard deduction, and by how much.

Sets the medical expense floor.
From Form 1098.
Income or sales tax, plus property tax. Capped at $40,400.
Cash and the fair value of goods, with receipts.
Only the part above $10,500 counts.
Investment interest, casualty losses in a declared disaster.

The standard deduction wins

$32,200
Standard deduction$32,200
Itemized total that counts$28,000
Margin between the two$4,200
Federal tax saved by itemizing$0
Your marginal bracket22%

Bunching two years of charitable giving or property tax into one year is the usual way to push a near-miss over the line.

How this is calculated

Two of the inputs are not taken at face value. State and local tax is capped for the year, so anything above the cap is simply lost. Medical and dental costs only count above 7.5 percent of adjusted gross income, which is why a household with ordinary medical bills usually gets nothing from that line and a household with a hospital year gets a lot.

The tax saving shown is the difference between the tax on income after the standard deduction and the tax after the itemized total, so it reflects your actual bracket rather than a flat percentage.

See IRS Topic 501 and Schedule A. Charitable deduction limits, mortgage balance limits and the phase-down of the state and local cap for very high earners are not modelled.