Tax? How much over the standard deduction do you need to have to be worth the hassle

[andersmg]

Anybody know the answer to this?

I know the standard deduction for married filing jointly is $10,700 and I may have a little over that amount if I itemize, I am just wondering if it is worth the effort...

I am not sure I will even be over the standard deduction amount and won't know for sure unless I gather all my medical bills, etc. etc.

I really don't think I will be more than a $1000 or so if even that and it will take some doing to gather all the info up that I need so if I did come up with $1000 over the standard is it even worth the extra amount I might save?

[towerclimber37]

Thats a good question...This will be my first year filing as a married man.

I tried to itemize my deductions last year but the tax people said I needed 8,600 before I would get any kind of money back...I came up about 200 bucks short.

[Mike.357]

two years ago whe we had our taxes done the CPA itemized, we were barely over the amount needed to do that. Last year they did their thing again and we did not have enough to itemize. The only thing that changed was a few dollars in interest payed on the mortgage.

For me if it saved my tax debt one dollar I would do it. The gov't is wasting our money and I will not give them one red cent more than I have to.

[bwswanson]

Something to think about is if you have someone else do your taxes they will charge you more to file an itemized deduction.

For a $1,000 I would file itemized.

[andersmg]

Thanks guys, I will look into it and see if I have enough to itemize or not...

[Mike.357]

Something to think about is if you have someone else do your taxes they will charge you more to file an itemized deduction.

I dunno about that, mine was the same either way. Pretty affordable still, and for me I have peace of mind knowing they were done correctly. YMMV