Itemizing Deductions

In 1947, Circuit Court Judge Learned Hand had a very famous quote regarding taxes, where he stated that taxes are enforced exactions and not voluntary contributions. Over the years, I’ve used this as an interpretive tool to basically show that, taxes are things that regardless of your, political affiliation, your, ideology as it pertains to those items are things that we want to reduce and keep to a minimum, as, Justice Hand said at that point.

So with that said, there’s a couple things out there that we want to discuss in terms of ways you can save on your taxes, and that pertains to itemizing deductions. Back in 2017, the first Trump administration passed the, tax Cuts and Jobs Act. Again, this was in 2017. And one of the consequences of that legislation was a significant increase in the standard deduction.

Well, if we fast forward here another eight years, we’ve had a new, law change called the, One Big Beautiful Bill legislation. This was passed in tax year 2025 and is effective, for 2025 and some of the provisions going forward in 2026. One of those important provisions increase the state and local tax cap for deductions.

This was capped by the original in 2017 legislation at $10,000 and has since been increased to $40,000. So if you were in the habit of just taking the standard deduction and not itemizing your tax deductions in 2017 through the last several years, perhaps this is an opportunity to review that and see if taking the itemized deductions, which is done on IRS schedule A is, prudent thing to do.

The IRS also is allowing you to deduct $2,000 as a charitable contribution, even if you don’t itemize. So these are a couple tax tips to help you plan to retire, plan your tax as well, going forward into retirement.