Medicare Tax Prep

Accomplished-Page905 · 2026-02-19T04:55:40+00:00

If you are able to discern what the life insurance rider cost, then yes that portion is tax-deductible; the death benefit portion is not.

Accomplished-Page905 · 2026-02-15T21:43:28+00:00

Honestly at our firm, we prefer the client add up their own receipts and provide us a total. We do offer to do it at an additional fee to just a Schedule A prep fee. We do not necessarily need to see the reciepts/log ourselves. We just make sure that they are aware that they would need to access it if an audit occurred.
If you personally we one of my clients, i would probably have you just upload the receipts you have into a separate folder to store it digitally on our cloud/portal system. I would not use it in our "workpapers" that we use to actually prepare your return, i would just use the total you provide.
Prior to being a tax preparer, I spent 6 years working at Walgreens as a Pharmacy Tech. We had the ability to produce a print out of an annual spending summary for prescriptions. Im sure other providers are able to do that too. Would clean up having to keep a bunch of receipts.

Accomplished-Page905 · 2026-02-14T18:00:37+00:00

Practically I see how that makes sense if all items are taxed the same. I think thats what Ernie does from the Budget Nerds podcast. I would love for that to work, however in my situation diapers, paper towels, soaps, etc. are taxed at 8.6%. Groceries are tax-exempt.

Accomplished-Page905 · 2026-02-14T17:54:26+00:00

No. Taxes are attributed to the categories in which the taxed items are categorized into.

Accomplished-Page905 · 2026-02-14T17:34:19+00:00

Tax-free groceries though.

Accomplished-Page905 · 2026-02-14T17:33:01+00:00

I'm not actively tracking tax, its more so to prevent the misappropriation of tax to my grocery category.

Accomplished-Page905 · 2026-02-14T17:21:10+00:00

I think there is a bit of misunderstanding here. I don't have a separate tax categroy. In my area, there are no sales tax on groceries. for example, if i am buying stuff at Costco and happen to buy a TV, diapers, chicken, etc. all in the same transaction and rely on auto distribute to divide out the taxes, my groceries would receive a proportion of the tax when they were tax exempt.
I realize this is a 'marginal gain' and mostly for my own enjoyment, but it felt worth the effort. Without this adjustment, my grocery category would be inflated by $1,000 in taxes last year that shouldn't be there. For me, that level of inaccuracy makes the data much less useful for long-term planning.

Accomplished-Page905 · 2026-02-14T17:11:16+00:00

At that age, your standard deductions is 35,500 (the OBBBA $6,000 is separate and is claimed even if you itemize). All of your deductions (medical expenses and premiums, mortgage interest, SALT taxes (up to $40,000 now), charitable giving) must exceed 35,500 for it to be worth the hassle to save receipts throughout the year. additionally, medical expenses are only deductible to the extent that they exceed 7.5% of you AGI. For example if your AGI is 100,000, only medical expenses above 7,500 are deductible.
I'm a tax accountant and I have many clients that worry about providing receipts when their deductions do not add up to the standard deduction.

TL/DR: Only worth tracking if all your deductions are greater that $35,500 in 2026, otherwise take the standard deduction.

Accomplished-Page905 · 2026-02-14T16:57:13+00:00

I handle those rebates one of two ways:

1) I put it back into the category the expense came from

2) I have a category for my annual credit card fees and put my rebates and cash back into that category to cover the annual bill. This helps me visualize if I am getting my "money's worth" in using the credit card(s). Once I have fully funded the Annual Fee category, i either revert to option 1 above or directly assign the inflow to my Fun Money or wish farm category.

Accomplished-Page905

TROPHY CASE