Re: Taxes and clubfoot

[Guest guest]

Michele,

You should be able to claim any and ALL medical related expenses on

your taxes, the tricky part is that in order to take the medical

expense deduction you have to spend 7% or more of your income on

medical.

>

> Do any of you claim part of the clubfoot treatment on your income

> taxes? We haven't ever, but I'm sure we could claim what ever the

> insurance compnay doesn't pay. I think we can claim copays right?

> Also I think mileage, tolls, etc. but I'm not really sure. I would

> think we could also probably claim what we paid out at the

> Mc House too right?

>

> If any of you have done this I would love to hear what you claimed,

> I'm going tonight to have my taxes done so it may be too late, but

I'm

> not leaving for a while so I will deffianlty have time to check

back

> and see any advice.

>

> MIchele

>

[Guest guest]

I'm not an accountant, but my recollection is that medical stuff (and I

don't know if the other expenses qualify but they might) is only

deductible over a certain percentage of your gross income (I think 7%).

So if you're making $50K/yr and the expenses were less than $3500 it

wouldn't do you any good. Say the expenses were $4000 and I have the

numbers right, then you would get $500 deduction but of course that is

only a deduction and not a direct tax reduction so your benefit in terms

of reduced taxes would be like $200. Make sense? Anyone care to correct

me - I haven't looked things up lately - this is just from memory.

If this does work for you, you'll want to claim ALL your medical for

everyone in the family - not just for the cf.

- Seth

(meir, lcf, 1/29/04,fab 12/7)

> Do any of you claim part of the clubfoot treatment on your income

> taxes? We haven't ever, but I'm sure we could claim what ever the

> insurance compnay doesn't pay. I think we can claim copays right?

> Also I think mileage, tolls, etc. but I'm not really sure. I would

> think we could also probably claim what we paid out at the

> Mc House too right?

>

> If any of you have done this I would love to hear what you claimed,

> I'm going tonight to have my taxes done so it may be too late, but I'm

> not leaving for a while so I will deffianlty have time to check back

> and see any advice.

>

> MIchele

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

[Guest guest]

Thank you, I guess it may be too late for me this year to gather

everything and tally by tonight because I didn't keep good records of

it, but I know next year we will qualify because I have a bunch of

medical bills sitting here unpaid. I'm sure we can't claim them till

we pay them, so I'll start getting organized for next year. I can't

remember exact appoinment dates etc to figure out how many times we

drove to specialists, to do the mileage, copays and tolls I wish I

kept tract better!

Michele

[Guest guest]

We were able to claim medical expenses on our Federal return, but you can only

claim what is over 7.5% of your income. For example, we spent over $7,000 last

year but could only claim $1,800. You claim mileage, tolls, and anything

insurance did not cover. It gets a little confusing about food and lodging, but

that didn't apply to us, so I didn't look into it deeply. Gas is able to be

claimed if you don't claim mileage. We got more by claiming mileage, but that

would just depend.

HTH,

michele_and_collin wrote:

Do any of you claim part of the clubfoot treatment on your income

taxes? We haven't ever, but I'm sure we could claim what ever the

insurance compnay doesn't pay. I think we can claim copays right?

Also I think mileage, tolls, etc. but I'm not really sure. I would

think we could also probably claim what we paid out at the

Mc House too right?

If any of you have done this I would love to hear what you claimed,

I'm going tonight to have my taxes done so it may be too late, but I'm

not leaving for a while so I will deffianlty have time to check back

and see any advice.

MIchele

[Guest guest]

I just looked it up. See http://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc502.html for the

details. It's at 7.5% of adjusted gross income. Like I said, if you

think you'll have enough to get over 7.5% this year, start saving receipts

because all the medical goes together for this - not just the " one big

thing " that made the year so expensive. And according to that page, you

do get to deduct your travel expenses. I've been fortunate in that my

insurance has covered enough that my copays are never enough to get

anywhere near 7.5% and my insurance is paid through my company (so it's a

deduction over there instead of personally) so I've never used this

deduction. But if you've got something big (and for some people just the

cf treatment could do it if insurance isn't covering) definitely go for

it. Of course, from what I've seen lately if the insurance isn't paying

for cf, you might as well see Dr. Dobbs for free.

- Seth

(meir, lcf, 1/29/04, fab 12/7)

> Do any of you claim part of the clubfoot treatment on your income

> taxes? We haven't ever, but I'm sure we could claim what ever the

> insurance compnay doesn't pay. I think we can claim copays right?

> Also I think mileage, tolls, etc. but I'm not really sure. I would

> think we could also probably claim what we paid out at the

> Mc House too right?

>

> If any of you have done this I would love to hear what you claimed,

> I'm going tonight to have my taxes done so it may be too late, but I'm

> not leaving for a while so I will deffianlty have time to check back

> and see any advice.

>

> MIchele

>

>

>

>

>

>

>

[Guest guest]

Thank you, I didn't even think I can just go to aetna's website and

look up all of them!!! Maybe I will be able to do it, I just don't

know if we will make the 7%over this year, I'll go check. Thanks!!!

Michele

[Guest guest]

We haven't actually done the medical expenses deduction, but did look

into it. I believe in order for it to apply, you have to qualify

based on a certain percentage of your income. I can't remember what

it was, but we didn't qualify even with 's seizure, his open

heart surgery and Aleksander's birth and stay in the NICU...all in

the same year. We certainly don't make loads of money, and we did

max out our out of pocket expenses with our medical insurance for the

year, so we had a TON of medical bills.

What I'm getting at in a round about way is that I think the

threshold for deducting medical expenses may be a bit higher than one

might expect.

Hope things work better for you than they did for us! It would have

been nice to have some consolation for dealing with all that in one

year!

>

> Do any of you claim part of the clubfoot treatment on your income

> taxes? We haven't ever, but I'm sure we could claim what ever the

> insurance compnay doesn't pay. I think we can claim copays right?

> Also I think mileage, tolls, etc. but I'm not really sure. I would

> think we could also probably claim what we paid out at the

> Mc House too right?

>

> If any of you have done this I would love to hear what you claimed,

> I'm going tonight to have my taxes done so it may be too late, but

I'm

> not leaving for a while so I will deffianlty have time to check

back

> and see any advice.

>

> MIchele

>