 reimbursements if your insurance company paid the provider directly for part of your expenses and you paid only an amount that remained include online one only of the amount you paid if you received a reimbursement in 2023 for medical and dental expenses you paid in 2023 reduce your 2023 expenses by this amount so you paid the amount they gave it back to you in the same year well clearly you didn't actually pay that amount you knew about it before filing the tax return which wouldn't happen until April 15th of 2024 or so and therefore obviously you could account for that however if you received a reimbursement in 2023 for prior year medical and dental expenses didn't uh don't reduce your 2023 expenses by this amount however if you reduce the expenses in the earlier year and the deduction reduced your tax you must include the reimbursement income in schedule one so this is where the funny possible problem could happen you got a reimbursement in 2023 of the premiums that you paid in the prior year now if you paid the premiums in the prior year then you possibly could have got a deduction for them if you didn't get a deduction for them possibly because you weren't itemizing or because you didn't qualify for the medical expenses part of the itemizing then you don't have to include the reimbursement in income in the current year but what if you did get a deduction for last year for these expenses and then you got a reimbursement do i have to go back and amend the prior year tax return to fix it because i actually got that reimbursed that would be more difficult know the easier thing to do would be to fix it in the current year by including it in income this is a similar situation as we saw with state taxes you get a state tax refund you deducted it last year possibly or if you deducted it on the schedule a and got a benefit from it you might have to include it in income in the current year so you could see publication 502 for details on how to figure the amount to include cafeteria plans you can't deduct amounts that have already been excluded from your income so don't include on line one insurance premiums paid by an employer sponsored health insurance plan cafeteria plan unless the premiums are included in box one of your forms w2 so if someone is having their health insurance through their employer and it's being paid then was it already reduced from their income in line one if it was it's if it's then then then you can't also deduct it because that would be a double dipping situation also don't include any other medical and dental expenses paid by the plan unless the amount paid is included in box one of forms w2 meaning it has to be something that was included basically an income and part of the plan in order for you to deduct it if they already reduced your income then that would be that they already basically gave you the deduction by not reporting it in income rather than putting it in income and then taking the deduction which by the way is better if you can get that situation because it's likely that most people won't be able to deduct it as an itemized deduction on schedule a either because they're not itemizing because they don't have deductions over the standard deduction or because of that 7.5 percent the limitation that they have to clear the floor of the adjusted gross income