 Income tax 2023-2024 standard deduction. Get ready and some coffee because you're supporting an entire generation with income tax preparation 2023-2024. Most of this information can be found in the line instructions section of the form 1040 instructions tax year 2023 which you can find on the IRS website at irs.gov irs.gov we're looking at the standard deduction envisioning the income tax formula where we're going to be taking the line item of either the greater of the standard deduction or itemized deduction remembering that the first half of the income tax formula is in essence a funny income statement because we have an income tax an income statement having income or revenue minus expenses income is the top line the expenses are going to be broken out into deductions which you could call the adjustments to income or above the line deduction schedule one deductions and what we might call the below the line deductions or the standard deduction or itemized deductions the ones that are greater we're going to pick the one that is greater because the greater one will lead to a lower taxable income and the lower the taxable income the better typically for income taxes because we will result in paying less taxes we'll talk about the itemized deductions later but note that many more people than in prior years are going to be taking the standard deduction because it was increased a few years ago in an attempt to simplify the tax code the thing that usually pushes people over into itemizing is going to be the ownership of a home because the home will have the mortgage typically the loan that helped people purchase the home and the interest related to that will often be deductible as well as the taxes including property taxes on the home also could trigger the ability to take uh state taxes so the home is usually the question you're going to ask to see whether or not they might be more likely to taking the itemized deduction versus the standard deduction first a word from our sponsor yeah actually we're sponsoring ourselves on this one because apparently the merchandisers they don't want to be seen with us but but that's okay whatever because our merchandise is is better than their stupid stuff anyways like our trust me i'm an accountant product line yeah it's paramount that you let people know that you're an accountant because apparently we're among the only ones equipped with the number crunching skills to answer society's current deep complex and nuanced questions if you would like a commercial free experience consider subscribing to our website at accounting instruction dot com or accounting instruction dot think of it dot com right now we're just looking at the standard deduction on the first page of the form 1040 we're looking at line 12 which is where we populate the standard deduction or itemized deduction if we were to itemize it would be coming from schedule a otherwise we're taking the standard deduction the general rule as on the left hand side of the form where we can see as we saw before and discussed that the filing status has a significant impact on the standard deduction the single or married filing separate at 13850 if we can memorize that number then we can simply double it to get to the married filing jointly or qualifying surviving spouse that's going to be the 27700 which kind of makes sense right so you can say standard deduction for one individual if those two individuals got married then you would think the standard deduction would double now again in reality that seems like a pretty nice deal because it's not always the case that when two people get married that they had the same level of income right usually one has more than the other and then they might start a family and it might be a little bit different that but it's easier to memorize it kind of incentivizes family structure in that way so there's that then you have the head of household which as we saw before typically requires a dependent and to be single and that's going to be the 20,800 in between the single and married filing jointly now that's not the end of it because we could have added components of the standard deduction based on age and things such as blindness so the story is not complete right here and we will continue on those added things to be aware of them as well as we go alright so we have the single and married filing jointly so if you or your spouse if you are married and filing a joint return can be claimed as a dependent on someone else's return check the appropriate box in the standard deduction so note that the standard deduction is going to be impacted on by in essence your filing status now if someone else can claim you as a dependent then they are in essence possibly getting a benefit on their taxes from you being claimed as a dependent on their taxes which you would think might have an impact on on your taxes right it's a general idea because you just like when you have a child you can't really double dip on the benefits of like one social security number being a dependent of the two of the two spouses for example similar situation with yourself if you're getting tax benefits by filing your return and someone else is trying to get a benefit from filing a return at with you as a dependent right so if you are married and file a joint return you can be claimed as a dependent on someone else's return if you file the joint return only to claim a refund of withheld income tax or estimated tax paid so in other words normally when you file a married filing joint return then someone else cannot claim you as a dependent typically because now you're you're filing a joint return and claiming in essence yourself for tax benefits but in special situations you might have a situation where someone else is still claiming you as a dependent and that would be if you are married and file a joint return and you can be claimed as a dependent on someone else's return if you file the joint return only to claim a refund of withheld income taxes in other words you had w2 income they withheld money and the only and you only want to file the return to make sure that you can get back the withholdings so if you were a dual status alien check the quote spouse itemizes on a separate return or you were a dual status alien box so if you were a dual status alien and you file a joint return with your spouse who was a u.s citizen or resident alien at the end of 2023 and you and your spouse agreed to be taxed on your combined worldwide income don't check the box all right so now we have the age and blindness situation so if you or your spouse if you are married filing a joint return were born before january 1st 1959 or were blind at the end of 2023 check the appropriate box on the line labeled age blindness so now we have an added component that could have an impact on the standard deduction which doesn't seem like it's going to like it like you would have a lot of different scenarios but it kind of does because note like if it depends on filing status so if you're single at this time or head of household then you could have a situation of age or blindness which might have an impact on the filing status and then if someone is married now you have two people which could possibly be both age uh have the age factor met and the blindness factor met right so so you can see the combinations that we have actually gets fairly complex because with a single filer you have two added possible components age and blindness that could have an impact on the standard deduction and if married you have two individuals both of who whom could have these two added conditions you know on each of them individual that could have an impact on the standard deduction for married filers okay so don't check any boxes for your spouse if your filing status is head of household so death of spouse in 2023 if your spouse was born before january 2nd 1959 but you died in 2023 before reaching age 65 don't check the box that says quote spouse was born before january 2nd 1959 so now we have this cutoff issue in the in the event of a death death which would hopefully be kind of a rare situation for that cutoff issue a person is considered to reach age 65 on the day before the person's 65th birth date now obviously if you properly input this information into the tax return if there was a death for example hopefully the tax return will help to do these cutoffs and these dates but you want to be able to understand and interpret what the tax return is doing so you can explain it to a client and make sure the tax return is properly being populated example your spouse was born on february 14th uh 1958 and died on february 13th 2023 your spouse is considered age 65 at the time of death check the appropriate box for your spouse so that so if you check the box for 65 older then you might have again a benefit from a tax perspective so that you could so that you could possibly take a higher standard deduction however if your spouse died on february 12th 2023 your spouse isn't considered age 65 so notice it's somewhat arbitrary they have to draw the line somewhere and so that you have that one day and so your spouse isn't considered age 65 don't check the box death of taxpayer in 2023 so if you are preparing a return for someone who died in 2023 see publication 501 before completing the standard deduction information you can find that on the irs website and then we have blindness so if you weren't totally blind as of december 31st 2023 you must get a statement certified by your eye doctor or or or femaladol i always get ophthalmologist okay i can't say that word the eye doctor or uh that it's because because now you have this situation where you might get a an increase to your standard deduction which would be a benefit if you're claiming blindness and now of course you have to have the question of are you actually blind to the point of recognition that you that you should get the tax benefit of it so you need some type of verification from that from in essence your eye doctor so you can't see better than 2200 and your better eye with glasses or contact lenses so obviously we have two eyes and you know one eye could be better than the other eye and so now you can get pretty technical in terms of what the condition would be in order to be thought of as blind to get the higher standard deduction your field of vision is 20 degrees or less okay if your eye condition isn't likely to improve beyond the conditions listed above you can get a statement certified by your eye doctor to this effect instead uh so you must keep the statement for your records in other words do i have to give that statement to the irs no you're going to check it off typically and then if you get audited the irs questions it then you're going to have to produce that uh documentation information evidence to the auditor so it's kind of again the audit in this case similar to like driving on the road in that you if your speed you're you might not get caught but if it if you do get caught then then you know you're gonna have to produce the evidence at that point in time or get hit with a penalty severe enough is the idea that it will deter people from uh just making deceptive or lying statements on the tax return in the future so if you receive a notice or letter but you would prefer to have it in braille or large print you can use form 9 000 alternative media preference to request notices in an alternative format including braille large print audio or electronic so you can attach form 9 000 to your return or mail it separately so you can download or view online tax forms and publications in a variety of formats including text only braille ready files browser friendly html other than tax forms accessible pds and large forms so if that's something that that you think would be useful for yourself or clients then you can look into those formats in more detail married filing separately if your filing status is married filing separately and your spouse itemizes deductions on their return check the quote spouse itemizes on a separate return uh or you were a dual status alien box so married when people are married they have the choice of filing married filing choice or or jointly which is usually the preferred option or will come up with the tax benefits most beneficial normally but you could file married filing separately if your filing status is married filing separately and your spouse was born before january 2nd 1959 or was blind at the end of 2023 you can check the appropriate boxes on the line labeled age blindness if your spouse had an income income isn't filing a return and can't be claimed as a dependent on another person's return this is the last page or page four of the form 1040 s r which can provide some more information about those different combinations that could have an impact on the standard deduction of age and blindness so standard deduction chart add the number of boxes checked in the age blindness section of standard deduction on page one and then if your filing status and here are the statuses single married filing jointly qualifying surviving spouse head of household married filing separately so when single and the number of boxes checked is one then your standard deduction is the 15700 if single and two boxes are checked what would that indicate over the age limit and blindness that's when it would go up to 175 50 now if you're married filing joint you could see the different combinations now you have two people who could be who could be over the age and could have blindness right so if you have one person that is either over the age or blind then the standard deduction is 29 200 if you have two people that are both over the age or one over the age and the other blind or both blind so you know a combo of two of those factors then we're at the 30700 if you had a three which means two people possibly over the age limit and one person blind or something like that but possibly could be two people blind and one person over the age limit so that would be the 32 4 and then if both people are over the age limit and both blind then you're at the 33 7 qualifying surviving spouse now you have the status that is that would be given you the standard deduction similar to married but it's the year after the death of the spouse typically in which case you're back down to one person so the one person could be over the age limit and blind right if they had over the age limit they would have the similar to the marital status right here same here here and then here and here if they were blind and over the limit head of household now you're just one person again so you could have one or two over the age limit or over the age limit and blind but the standard deduction started at a higher point because you're ahead of household typically meaning you had a dependent so 22 650 and 24 500 and then married filing separately so now you have you're married but now you're filing the the separate returns so you're gonna so then you have your scenarios for the married filing separately situation so you can see it actually gets it seems fairly basic but it actually gets a little bit complex when you start to think about the different combinations that could impact the standard deduction for these two factors with one or two people involved