First year w/o itemizing for taxes since 1985

[statsman]

This will be the first time since 1985 that my DW and I will not be able to itemize deductions for taxes. We're not even close to the standard deduction (mortgage was paid off late 2018; rented for half of 2019, property tax (TX) based on land value for 2019 with new house build).

As usual, we're filing with TurboTax. Does it make any sense to fill in what deductions we do have (small property taxes, charitable contributions, medical expenses beyond 7.5%) if TurboTax is just going to apply the standard deduction?

 

[bloom2708]

I continue to enter my deductions in.

At the end I get a summary that compares previous years and standard vs itemized.

I am tempted to not type it in for 2019, but I probably will.

 

[Walt34]

We haven't itemized for I guess about 20 years. After we paid off the house the standard deduction got us the lower tax so that's what we use.

 

[RunningBum]

I don't bother when I know there's no way I come out ahead itemizing. No need to add any more work to doing taxes, IMO.

If you live in a state where you can claim standard on federal, but itemize on state, you might want to do it. My state doesn't allow this.

 

[Clone]

We entered everything last year even though I knew we would be using the standard deduction. One or two of the items ended up coming into play on the state taxes. I think charitable deductions might have been one of them.

 

[statsman]

I don't bother when I know there's no way I come out ahead itemizing. No need to add any more work to doing taxes, IMO.

If you live in a state where you can claim standard on federal, but itemize on state, you might want to do it. My state doesn't allow this.

That's what I was thinking. Since we moved from CA to TX in late 2018, we won't file a state return for the first time since high school (at least for me) this year.

 

[pb4uski]

I don't bother when I know there's no way I come out ahead itemizing. No need to add any more work to doing taxes, IMO. ...

+1

 

[Bir48die]

We live in a state when they will carry over itemized deductions to subtract off state income tax. So, yes I do. Since itemizing takes twenty minutes on TT with info carryover it's no big deal. All the time spent is inputting K-1's. So nice now to import out of Schwab and Fidelity for CG's.

 

[COcheesehead]

I don’t bother. I know I am below the standard deduction. If you enter them TT just tells you the standard deduction is best for you and you’ll never get that 10 minutes of your life back.

 

[Out_the_Door]

We live in a state when they will carry over itemized deductions to subtract off state income tax. So, yes I do.

Ditto...I live in a state where you can take the standard deduction on federal and itemize on state (I believe the state (CA) standard deduction is $4537) so it's always worth it to itemize (my property taxes alone exceed the state standard deduction)

 

[DrRoy]

I don't bother when I know there's no way I come out ahead itemizing. No need to add any more work to doing taxes, IMO.

If you live in a state where you can claim standard on federal, but itemize on state, you might want to do it. My state doesn't allow this.

+2

 

[badatmath]

Waste of life to gather the information if I can't use it.

 

[rk911]

we continue to enter the data. it’s EZ enough to do and i like seeing how it compares to previous years.

 

[Tracer]

Itemizing was always what took the longest time for me. Last year was my first year I benefited from the larger standard deduction. After starting, it didn't take me long to see I was never going to reach the SD. Taxes are a breeze now. Import my stuff from Fidelity and everything goes to where it's supposed to without any effort on my part. Some of my accounts are managed with a lot of buying, selling with capital gains, wash sales, etc. A nightmare if I had to figure that out myself. Plug in a few other things like bank interest, annuity income, SS and I'm DONE! Piece of cake! No need putting in itemized deductions. Waste of time IMO. I like easy.

 

[mystang52]

As a few others posted, I get to deduct some of my medical from State, so I track all of the old deductions.
But starting in 2021 I'm getting an accountant.
TurboTax almost cost me $250 by taxing DW's NJ pension. This is not taxable until her benefits exhaust her contributions. Yeah, Turbo did have a place to factor this in, but unless I looked for it I could have very easily missed it.
In another year or two I'll be drawing on some of our tax-deferred accounts, and they are a mix of pre and post-tax federal and state. I don't trust Turbo to handle that correctly.

 

[Hyper]

So if not itemizing can you just use the 1040 ez form from IRS? Why turbo tax if taxes are simple. This will be our last yr also but we've always used the same cpa. He sent out a letter end of Dec saying he was quitting to spend more time on his other businesses. We weren't impressed by his timing so close to filing and asked that he finish out ours as we decided to close out a small business a yr earlier as we didn't want to go find another cpa. Looking forward to very simple tax filings!

 

[ncbill]

Ditto...also note that under the new rules the number of dependents no longer matter either...as long as you don't need a particular one for a credit.

 

[londo]

So if not itemizing can you just use the 1040 ez form from IRS?

There is no 1040-EZ any more, but there are a bunch of free filing options at irs.gov/freefile. I've been filing for years filling out the actual forms online without using turbotax; it's really not that hard.

 

[dtbach]

I don't bother when I know there's no way I come out ahead itemizing. No need to add any more work to doing taxes, IMO.

If you live in a state where you can claim standard on federal, but itemize on state, you might want to do it. My state doesn't allow this.

Plus 1 for me too!

 

[USGrant1962]

...

If you live in a state where you can claim standard on federal, but itemize on state, you might want to do it. My state doesn't allow this.

My state requires you to use the same election as your federal tax, and last year I saved more in state taxes than lost in federal by itemizing less than $24K. Though OP is in Texas so state income taxes are not a factor.

 

[gerntz]

New temporary Fed tax law simplified our return prep as don't have to itemize.

 

[RunningBum]

So if not itemizing can you just use the 1040 ez form from IRS? Why turbo tax if taxes are simple.

Nope. I have too much interest income, dividends, cap gains distributions, foreign tax credits, capital loss carryover, and probably a couple others, any one of which prevent me from using 1040-EZ. I suspect most here have a similar list. These complicate 1040 enough to warrant using a tax program, but it is pretty quick and easy using Turbo Tax. I did mine in a couple of hours yesterday. I'm waiting to see if any other tax forms come in that I might have forgotten, and to do my review as well.