heatherlyvox@gmail.com
  • Home
  • Demos
  • Videos
  • Clients
  • Blog
  • Contact

Heather Walters

Premium blend VO to invigorate your brand.

VO Tip FRIDAY: Medical Tax Deductions

Financial, Voice-Over

As a self-employed creative in charge of a business and a household, I am always interested in new ways to trim our monthly budget and keep as much of our family’s income in the bank as I can. This week, our family officially cut-the-cord and switched to streaming television. Ahhhh… so liberating! Another way I like to keep our monthlies in check is by giving less-and-less to Uncle Sam each quarter.

While I have shared some Easy Tax Tips before, deducting medical expenses is so often overlooked, or not known. Many of us currently file on Form 1040, Schedule C. But according to IRS.gov, if you itemize your deductions for a taxable year on Form 1040, Schedule A (PDF), Itemized Deductions, you can deduct expenses toward your family’s medical care, including “payments for the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease, or payments for treatments affecting any structure or function of the body.”

These expenses include medical and dental care you paid for yourself, your spouse, and your dependents. The following list comes straight from IRS.gov and is worth your read:

  • Payments of fees to doctors, dentists, surgeons, chiropractors, psychiatrists, psychologists, and nontraditional medical practitioners.
  • Payments for in-patient hospital care or residential nursing home care, if the availability of medical care is the principal reason for being in the nursing home, including the cost of meals and lodging charged by the hospital or nursing home. If the availability of medical care isn’t the principal reason for residence in the nursing home, the deduction is limited to that part of the cost that’s for medical care.
  • Payments for acupuncture treatments or inpatient treatment at a center for alcohol or drug addiction, for participation in a smoking-cessation program and for drugs to alleviate nicotine withdrawal that require a prescription
  • Payments to participate in a weight-loss program for a specific disease or diseases diagnosed by a physician, including obesity, but not ordinarily payments for diet food items or the payment of health club dues
  • Payments for insulin and payments for drugs that require a prescription
  • Payments made for admission and transportation to a medical conference relating to a chronic disease that you, your spouse, or your dependents have (if the costs are primarily for and essential to necessary medical care). However, you may not deduct the costs for meals and lodging while attending the medical conference
  • Payments for false teeth, reading or prescription eyeglasses or contact lenses, hearing aids, crutches, wheelchairs, and for a guide dog or other service animal to assist a visually impaired or hearing disabled person, or a person with other physical disabilities
  • Payments for transportation primarily for and essential to medical care that qualify as medical expenses, such as payments of the actual fare for a taxi, bus, train, ambulance, or for transportation by personal car, the amount of your actual out-of-pocket expenses such as for gas and oil, or the amount of the standard mileage rate for medical expenses, plus the cost of tolls and parking
  • Payments for insurance premiums you paid for policies that cover medical care or for a qualified long-term care insurance policy covering qualified long-term care services. However, if you’re an employee, don’t include in medical expenses the portion of your premiums treated as paid by your employer under its sponsored group accident, health policy, or qualified long-term care insurance policy. Also, don’t include the premiums that you paid under your employer-sponsored policy under a premium conversion policy (pre-tax), paid by an employer-sponsored health insurance plan (cafeteria plan) or any other medical and dental expenses unless the premiums are included in box 1 of your Form W-2 (PDF), Wage and Tax Statement. For example, if you’re a federal employee participating in the premium conversion program of the Federal Employee Health Benefits (FEHB) program, you may not include the premiums paid for the policy as a medical expense.

Also directly from IRS.gov: “If you’re self-employed and have a net profit for the year, you may be eligible for the self-employed health insurance deduction. This is an adjustment to income, rather than an itemized deduction, for premiums you paid on a health insurance policy covering medical care, including a qualified long-term care insurance policy covering medical care, for yourself, your spouse, and dependents. In addition, you may be eligible for this deduction for your child who is under the age of 27 at the end of 2016 even if the child wasn’t your dependent. See Chapter 6 of Publication 535 for eligibility information. If you don’t claim 100% of your paid premiums, you can include the remainder with your other medical expenses as an itemized deduction on Form 1040, Schedule A (PDF).”

I am not a CPA, so this is merely a distribution of information, but I am a fan of saving money and sharing cool finds with my VO colleagues. I hope you are able to benefit from this often overlooked tax deduction.

Happy VO’ing!

-Heather

Filed Under: Financial, Voice-Over Tagged With: CESD, female imaging talent, Heather Walters, Hoss, Nate Zeitz, promos, radio imaging, self-employed, VO

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

Play
Stop
Next»
«Prev
HIDE PLAYLIST
X
WORK WITH ME

Search

Categories

  • Family
  • Financial
  • Living well
  • Voice-Over

Archives

  • August 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • June 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016

Recent Posts

  • 3 Imaging Clients Among 2018 CMA Broadcast Nominees!!
  • Congrats to ACM Large Market Personality of the Year – Dale Carter!! #ClientsILove
  • Benztown Top 50 AGAIN!!
  • Thankful for My Amazing Clients!
  • How a #VoxyLady say Happy Halloween!!

SUBCRIBE

  • This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

©2018 Heather Walters // Voice Over Site by Voice Actor Websites

Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}