Standard Deduction For 2017 Tax Year

When filing your Federal income tax return, taxpayers can choose to either take the standard deduction or to itemize their deductions. About two out of every three income-tax returns claim the standard deduction. Whether to itemize deductions on your tax return depends on how much you spent on certain expenses last year. Money paid for medical care, mortgage interest, taxes, charitable contributions, casualty losses and miscellaneous deductions can reduce your taxes. If the total amount spent on those categories is more than your standard deduction, you can usually benefit by itemizing.

Unfortunately, many taxpayers get it wrong. Failing to itemize personal deductions is the single biggest mistake people make when doing their taxes. According to a Government Accountability Office report, as many as 2.2 million taxpayers overpay their taxes by an average of $610 per year because they fail to itemize their deductions.