Medical expense deduction: How to claim medical costs on your taxes

Your medical expenses may be tax-deductible, meaning you could lower your total tax bill. You can deduct the cost of any medical bills you pay out of pocket once they exceed 7.5 percent of your adjusted gross income (AGI), in a given year.

However, you must itemize your deductions to deduct your medical expenses. Most taxpayers no longer itemize, because the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act almost doubled the standard deduction.

What is the medical expense deduction?

If you itemize your deductions each year using Schedule A, you might be able to deduct some of the medical and dental expenses you paid out of pocket. Deducting these expenses from your income can reduce your tax burden.

The IRS allows filers to deduct medical expenses that are more than 7.5 percent of their adjusted gross income.

For example, let’s say your adjusted gross income (AGI) for 2024 was $45,000. Multiply that by 0.075 and you get $3,375. That’s the threshold for your medical expenses. If your unreimbursed, out-of-pocket medical bills totaled $6,000, you can deduct $2,625 ($6,000 minus $3,375).

Eligible medical and dental bills for you, your spouse and your dependents — everyone listed on your tax return — count toward the deduction threshold. Expenses can include payments for the “diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment or prevention of disease, or payments for treatments affecting any structure or function of the body,” according to the IRS.

What medical expenses are tax-deductible?

Here are some tax-deductible medical expenses:

• Travel expenses to and from medical treatments. For the 2024 and 2025 tax years, the medical travel rate is 21 cents per mile, down from 22 cents per mile in 2023.
• Insurance costs, including premiums, co-insurance and co-pays, from already-taxed income. This includes the cost of long-term care insurance, up to certain limits based on your age.
• Uninsured medical expenses, such as an extra pair of glasses or set of contact lenses, false teeth, hearing aids and artificial limbs.
• Costs of alcohol- or drug-abuse treatments.
• Eye surgery, such as Lasik, when it is not just for cosmetic purposes.
• Medically necessary costs prescribed by a physician. For example, if your doctor recommended you put a humidifier in your home to help with breathing problems, the humidifier and additional electricity costs could be at least partially deductible.
• Some medical conference costs. You can count admission and transportation expenses to the conference if it concerns a chronic illness that afflicts you, your spouse or a dependent. However, meals and lodging costs while at the seminar are not deductible.
• Weight-loss programs for a specific disease diagnosed by a physician, such as obesity or hypertension.

The IRS offers an online tool to help you figure out if your medical and dental expenses are deductible.

Another way to get a tax break for your medical expenses is with a flexible spending account, or FSA. An FSA lets you set aside before-tax money, up to a certain amount, with which to pay out-of-pocket medical expenses. FSA contribution limits are $3,200 in 2024 and $3,300 in 2025.

The money you contribute to an FSA avoids income and payroll taxes and is deducted from your income, so it can lower your tax bill.

Other deductible medical expenses

If you have special needs, there are other costs you can write off, such as the cost of a wheelchair, crutches, equipment that enables a deaf person to use a telephone or devices that provide television closed-captioning. Other deductible expenses include guide dogs for the blind or hearing-impaired, or the costs to retrofit your car with special hand controls or space to hold a wheelchair.

If you make renovations to your home for medical reasons, you can deduct the cost as a medical expense. Expenses related to making your home more accessible for a disabled resident also are deductible, but you likely won’t be able to write off the full costs.

Aging-in-place home remodels you can write off include:

• Installing ramps.
• Widening doors and hallways, and lowering counters and cabinets.
• Adjusting electrical outlets and fixtures.
• Grading exterior landscape to ease access to the house.
• Adding a chairlift to get up and down stairs.

If the improvement increases the value of your property, that amount is subtracted from the project’s cost and the difference counts as a medical expense.

For example, say you spend $60,000 to install an elevator in your home because you have a heart problem and can’t walk up and down flights of stairs anymore. Your home was worth $200,000; the elevator raised the value to $240,000. The cost of the elevator minus the increase in your home value is what you can deduct – in this case, $20,000.

Which medical bills are not tax-deductible?

Surgery that is strictly cosmetic, health club dues and weight-loss programs that aren’t medically necessary aren’t tax-deductible. Neither are hair transplant procedures or electrolysis.

For a complete list of deductible and non-deductible medical expenses, check out IRS Publication 502. You might find a few expenses that can help get you over the deduction threshold.

How to claim the medical expense deduction

If you have enough expenses to exceed the standard deduction for your filing status, you can start itemizing expenses, including medical bills, to reduce your taxable income.

Itemized medical expenses and other itemized expenses are tallied on Schedule A of IRS Form 1040. Schedule A is separated into sections for different categories of deductible expenses. Once you have totaled the expenses for each category, add them up and put the total on your Form 1040.