What is the standard deduction amount for 2025, and what about 2023 and 2024? (That way I don’t have to go through and delete that data 🙂 The IRS updated the standard deduction number and it’s a little bit higher this year again.
When filing income taxes, taxpayers can choose to either itemize tax deductions, or take the standard tax deduction amount. The IRS adjusts how much the standard deduction is each year based upon inflation. The 2025 standard tax deduction amount is a bit higher than the 2024 deduction amount for most taxpayers because of inflation.
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Remember, even though you will be filling your taxes in early 2025, those tax returns are for the year 2024, so use the 2024 standard deduction amount on taxes you work on in the first quarter of 2025. When you file your taxes in early 2025, those taxes are for your income and deductions in 2024. Alright, now that we’ve beaten that horse to death, let’s get to some numbers.
2024 Standard Tax Deduction Amount
For use when filing your taxes in early 2025.
As usual, there are different deduction values depending upon how you file your income taxes.
- Single and Married Filing Separately 2024: $14,600
- Married Filing Jointly 2024: $29,200
- Head of Household 2024: $21,900
The annual gift exclusion increases to $18,000 for 2024 up from $17,000 in 2023.
2025 Standard Deduction Amounts
Just the way the math worked out this time around, the 2025 standard tax deduction amounts are nice round numbers.
Single and Married Filing Separately 2025: $15,000 up $400
Married Filing Jointly 2025: $30,000 up $1,800 from 2024.
2023 Standard Deduction Amounts
For use when filing your taxes in early 2024.
If you are curious, the 2023 standard deduction amount has been released by the IRS. These numbers will be used when filing your 2023 taxes in early 2024. These are NOT the deduction numbers used while filing 2022 taxes before April 15, 2023.
Single and Married Filing Separately 2023: $13,850 up $900
Married Filing Jointly 2023: $27,700 up $1,800 from 2022.
Head of Household 2023: $20,800
The annual gift exclusion increases to $17,000 for 2023.
2024 Standard Deduction Over 65 Chart
Also, the 2024 standard deduction for the blind chart
The chart refers to the checkboxes on Form 1040 in the Standard Deduction section with the subheading Age/Blindness. You get one check mark for being born before January 2, 1959, giving you the standard deduction 2024 over 65 amount. You get another checkmark if you are blind. If you are married filing jointly, your spouse also has the same checkmarks. So, if you and your spouse are over 65, you get two boxes checked. If both you and your spouse are over 65 and one of you is blind, then you have three boxes checked, and so on.
Itemize or Use Standard Tax Deduction
Itemizing isn’t really what it used to be under the newer TCJA tax law.
Instead, taxpayers will need to file one, or more, of seven additional schedules that go along with Form 1040 in order to itemize deductions in 2023, 2024, and 2025.
For example, Educator expenses, Health Savings Accounts, moving expenses, IRA deductions and Student Loan deductions are all found on Schedule 1. You’ll need Schedule 3 for Child and Dependent care expenses. Schedule 4 has both Self-Employment tax, and where you’ll need to report taxes if you have a nanny.
All reputable tax software calculates how to still make your deductions (if they add up to enough) and will fill in the appropriate schedules for you. They continue to improve Credit Karma free tax returns. Other tax preparation software includes TaxCut, TaxAct, and TurboTax. — Now is the time to start watching for tax software specials. They always throw out good deals in the holiday shopping season that disappear come the new year.
If doing taxes by hand, then, find the big deductions first, and see if they provide anywhere near the amount necessary to bother filling out the various forms and schedules. For example, you will need a mortgage with a principal balance remaining near $525,000 at 5% interest to generate $29,200 of interest necessary to make itemizing more advantageous. If you are still holding on to a 2% or 3% mortgage, you’ll need even more. Unless you have some other big, itemized deductions, most people need to get 80% or 90% of the way there with their mortgage interest.
Other large deductions include medical expenses, but only if they exceed 7.5 percent of your income, and property taxes.
Deductions Without Itemizing
Some deductions are available without itemizing, such as the child tax credit.
Penalties for not cashing matured savings bonds.
Other common tax deductions will require additional forms beyond the basic 1040: educator expenses, health savings account deduction, moving expenses, IRA deductions, student loan interest, and tuition and fees.
Standard Deduction with Small Business
It is still possible to take the standard deduction if you own a small business. Many small businesses file a Schedule C to report income and expenses related to the business. Various businesses can have large deductions (and income) including the home office deduction.
How To Actually File Your Taxes
The IRS keeps threatening to have a useful, free, do it yourself, online tax filing system. So far, it only worked for people with simple taxes. If you’re an entrepreneur or freelancer, you should probably just get some tax software to help you out. I always get TurboTax Home Business because I don’t need the payroll stuff in TurboTax Business, but I do need all the home office deduction calculations in the Home Business version which isn’t available in the Deluxe edition. It’s confusing, but if you know what you need you can just check the descriptions and buy the right version for you. If you don’t know what you need, buy Standard or Deluxe and Intuit will be more than happy to charge you some money to upgrade to the right version if you run into something you can’t do on the cheaper ones.
Other Tax Information
Here is how to get an IRS tax transcript and information on what happens if you don’t file your taxes on time.
WHAT ABOUT OVER 65? Needle in a haystack trying to find it. I’ll just go to irs.gov
Hey John,
A fair question. Difficult to answer because the amount of the standard deduction for people over 65 (and/or who are blind) is sort of tricky. I’m going to add the chart to the article in case anyone else in your shoes comes looking. In the meantime, the standard deduction for over 65 is $14,250 if you are single. The standard deduction for over 65 married filing jointly is $27,800 if you are both over 65. It’s $26,450 if only one of you is over 65. The same numbers are the standard deduction for blind people who are not over 65. And so on… you see how this gets complicated quickly. I try not to get bogged down in all of the exceptions to the rule in order to keep the overall articles as easy to understand financial advice that you can really use. That being said, it won’t hurt to include the over 65 standard deduction and blind standard deduction chart.
Lovely just what I was searching for. Thanks to the author
for taking his time on this one.