 Head of household and the qualified surviving spouse and so on Also, remember the primary thing that pushes people over from taking the standard deduction to itemized deduction is the ownership of a home Because ownership of the home typically comes with a loan a mortgage which comes with mortgage interest Which might be deductible as an itemized deduction as well as Related property taxes which are a form of state and local taxes Which also could be deductible for itemized deductions. We're talking about taxes here Taxes can be confusing because you might be thinking hey look I'm calculating the federal income tax which is the primary tax that pays the federal government to pay for things Like the military therefore you would think that I would not be able to deduct federal income taxes when calculating Federal income taxes because yeah, well that would result in a circle reference and that's typically the case We can't really deduct federal income taxes when calculating federal income taxes But what about state and local taxes are those things that can be deductible now? Remember the general rule that's often violated with the itemized deductions for an income tax would be I should be able to Duck deduct those things that helped me to generate revenue And we can see that most clearly on a schedule C type of business a schedule C Form for a business because you have income minus expenses business deductions Resulting in net income and makes sense to tax the net income not the gross income Because you needed to expend those expenditures in order to generate the revenue However on the schedule a we often have these kind of weird things where we get to deduct things even though they're not business Expenses we saw that with the medical expenses You can see that with like charitable deductions and whatnot. These are things that the government decided We should be able to deduct for reasons other than just the collecting of revenue to pay the military and then stay out of our business type of thing and taxes kind of fall into that Area as well on the state and local taxes. It doesn't really make sense. It kind of seems like they shouldn't be getting into deducting state and local taxes On the schedule a unless they were business type of deductions Possibly and and the reason is because the federal government is kind of influencing how the states act and you could see if you look at the past some states have been subsidized through federal taxes and they tend to You know and they tend to increase their their taxes, right because anything that subsidized Tends to kind of go up. So States that have high taxes you could see that happening and They also influenced the format that the states can tax So they used the federal government could say they used to say will allow The state income tax as a deduction, but what if some states don't want to use an income tax? They want to use a sales tax. Well, then the government has to say well Now we're going to include the use of a sales tax as something that we can deduct on the schedule a and you could see how the back And forth happens and gets kind of complicated When we think about the types of things that might be deductible on the schedule a for taxes So here's a general overview. So taxes you paid taxes you can't deduct So federal income and most excise taxes So clearly you can't deduct the federal income taxes for your own federal tax return That would result in a circle reference. You can't deduct social security Medicare federal unemployment Futa and railroad retirement are RTA. So notice that the social security Medicare these are Futa tax and Futa, which is like a payroll tax These are taxes that are that are kind of payroll taxes and you could say well, that's not the income tax It's separate from the income tax Can I deduct those for federal income taxes not on the schedule a now if you're an employee or employee? Situation can you deduct the employee part of the the Social Security and Medicare? That's a different issue, right? If you're if you're a soul if you're if you're self-employed Can you deduct half of the Social Security and Medicare for self-employed?