Are Chiropractic Fees Tax Deductible?

Hello everyone, and welcome to our next segment of Ask Dr Doug. Today we’re going to be covering, Are Chiropractic Fees Tax-deductible? Before we get  into that my name is doctor Doug Morris, with Clearview Family Chiropractic. I am a structural corrective care chiropractor located in the Charlotte North Carolina area. We focus on restructuring reshaping the spine to get back to normal, kind of like with an orthodontist, does the teeth, that’s what we do with the spine. So are Chiropractic fees tax deductible? This is a question I get a lot, this time of year people want to know, and they have me print out what their fees were for last year so that they can turn those in. Today, we brought in a professional to help us with that, this is Robert Trautwine with RPT Consulting.  So Robert go ahead and tell us a little bit about that. Hey guys Robert Trautwine RPT Consulting coming at you right here from Charlotte North Carolina, South Park to be specific we’re, a full service tax and small business advisory practice out here and so the question is,  can Chiropractic the cost of Chiropractic treatments be deducted on your tax return and typically the answer that, yes, they can. They fall within the list of qualified expenses per publication, 502 And so there are some considerations and in some constraints around this, one of the bigger ones is that you have the itemize your deductions to be able to claim these expenses. You can’t take the standard deduction and claim these expenses as well. There are some further constrains around itemized deductions in and around the AGI so you can’t itemize these deductions if they’re less than 10 percent of your AGI, that being your, adjusted gross income. So for example, if your, adjusted gross income is a hundred thousand dollars in 2017 you cannot claim these expenses unless they are greater than 10000 dollars or 10 percent of the AGI in 2017 that’s 10 percent of the floor 2018 that’s lowed to 7.5 percent of AGI little bit of a benefit there with respect the HR1 jobs and tax act. Another thing to consider is that you have to incur and pay those cost within the year of the tax return, filing and so if you incur and pay cost for example, within 2018 you cannot take those deductions into tax return and file for  2017 Perhaps the biggest one that is a constraint and a bit of issue, is that if the dollars are coming out of a FSA account or a HSA account those are typically pretax dollars and so there is a tax benefit already attached to those dollars, and so taking those dollars and claiming tax return for a secondary benefit is consider what is called double dipping and so the IRS really frowns on that. So there you have it folks, Can tax deductions be claimed with respect to expenses for chiropractic treatments, the answer that is generally, yes, but there are some constrains around that so I will go ahead and through back over to doctor Doug Morris to close out. Awesome, Thank you very much. I hope that answered your guys question once again we are located in charlotte North Carolina. If you guys have any more questions, feel free to comment below. Please. Like and share this. Thank you very much and have a great day guys. Thanks guys!