It’s tax time again and this years deadline is April 18th. Below are seven commonly overlooked tax deductions that address key areas of your financial life.
Refinancing mortgage points – When you buy a house, you get to deduct points paid to obtain your mortgage all at one time. When you refinance a mortgage, however, you have to deduct the points over the life of the loan. That means you can deduct 1/30th of the points a year if it’s a 30-year mortgage—that’s $33 a year for each $1,000 of points you paid.
State tax you paid last spring – Did you owe taxes when you filed your 2015 state tax return in 2016? Then remember to include that amount with your state tax itemized deduction on your 2016 return, along with state income taxes withheld from your paychecks or paid via quarterly estimated payments.
Student loan interest paid by Mom and Dad – In the past, if parents paid back a student loan incurred by their children, no one got a tax break. To get a deduction, the law said that you had to be both liable for the debt and actually pay it yourself. But now there’s an exception. If Mom and Dad pay back the loan, the IRS treats it as though they gave the money to their child, who then paid the debt. So a child who’s not claimed as a dependent can qualify to deduct up to $2,500 of student loan interest paid by Mom and Dad.
Child and Dependent Care Tax Credit – It’s easy to overlook the child and dependent care credit if you pay your child care bills through a reimbursement account at work. Until a few years ago, the child care credit applied to no more than $4,800 of qualifying expenses. The law allows you to run up to $5,000 of such expenses through a tax-favored reimbursement account at work.
Now, however, up to $6,000 can qualify for the credit, but the old $5,000 limit still applies to reimbursement accounts. So if you run the maximum $5,000 through a plan at work but spend more for work-related child care, you can claim the credit on up to an extra $1,000. That would cut your tax bill by at least $200.
Out-of-pocket charitable contributions – It’s hard to overlook the big charitable gifts you made during the year by check or payroll deduction. But the little things add up, too, and you can write off out-of-pocket costs you incur while doing good deeds. Ingredients for casseroles you regularly prepare for a nonprofit organization’s soup kitchen, for example, or the cost of stamps you buy for your school’s fund raiser count as a charitable contribution. If you drove your car for charity in 2016, remember to deduct 14 cents per mile.
Reinvested dividends – This isn’t really a tax deduction, but it is a subtraction that can save you a lot of money. And it’s one that many taxpayers miss. If, like most investors, you have mutual fund dividends automatically invested in extra shares, remember that each reinvestment increases your “tax basis” in the fund. That, in turn, reduces the amount of taxable capital gain (or increases the tax-saving loss) when you sell your shares.
Forgetting to include the reinvested dividends in your cost basis—which you subtract from the proceeds of sale to determine your gain—means overpaying your taxes.
Jury pay paid to employer – Some employers continue to pay employees’ full salary while they are doing their civic duty, but ask that they turn over their jury fees to the company coffers. The only problem is that the IRS demands that you report those fees as taxable income. If you give the money to your employer you have a right to deduct the amount so you aren’t taxed on money that simply passes through your hands.