Standard vs. Itemized Deductions #doctor #physicianfinance #personalfinance #money

If you don't want to take the standard deduction, you can try to get a bigger deduction, and we call that itemized deductions. The first one is medical and dental expenses. However, there's a limit on these. You basically only get the expenses that are more than 7.5% of your income. This isn't a real common deduction for people to take. One that is very common for doctors is taxes that you pay. And these include state and local taxes. They also include your real estate taxes, your property taxes. The next category, and probably the biggest one for lots of people, is mortgage interest. The other big category is charity. So if you're a charitable person, if you tithe, the big ones are charity, mortgage, interest, and $10,000 of taxes. So if that all adds up to more than your standard deduction of about $14,000 or about $28,000, then you itemize.