A few days ago, I received a pleasant email from Bank of America with some advice for tax season, several of which were very useful.
One was a page on itemizing deductions. Like many people, whether or not to itemize deductions or take the standard deduction is a confusing choice. The short answer is that if you have large (several thousand dollars or more) expenses in the following categories, then you should consider it:
- Medical expenses more than 7.5% of your adjusted gross income
- Mortgage interest
- Charitable contributions
- State and local income taxes, general sales tax on retail purchases, as well as real estate and property taxes. Not all of these can be combined, though.
- Things like gambling losses, tools, and dues that exceed 2% of your adjusted gross income
They also had a page on what’s new with 2008 taxes, like inflation adjustments, and changes to the alternative minimum tax.
Normally, I throw away nearly all email from banks. At best, it’s notifying me of new terms of service, and at worst it’s an offer for yet another credit card. This time I had a pleasant surprise. (I would link to their article, but unfortunately it seems nearly impossible to link to the web pages: they aren’t available on their normal web site, and the links don’t seem to work unless clicked-through from the email newsletter they sent to me.)