How do I claim my heath insurance as a deduction on my tax forms?

Question

What forms do I need, what website has the specifics?

Answer 1

Health insurance is a possible deduction only if you pay the premiums out of pocket. If the premiums are paid through your employer, they are taken out of your pay before taxes, and no deduction is possible.

If you pay your own premiums with after tax dollars, and you are not self-employed, you deduct the premiums on Schedule A of Form 1040 as a medical expense. All medical expenses have to total more than 7.5% of your adjusted gross income in order to get a deduction. You deduct the difference of your expenses minus 7.5% of your adjusted gross income. Unless you have rather high medical expenses, it is difficult to deduct these expenses.

Moreover, the sum of all your Schedule A deductions must be greater than your standard deduction in order for Schedule A to do you any good.

If you are self-employed you can deduct 100% of your (and your spouse and dependent) health insurance premiums from your net earnings from self-employment. This is done on Schedule C of Form 1040.

All this is explained in the instructions to Form 1040. Here is the link

http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i1040.pdf

Answer 2

That depends. If you are an employee, you would put your health insurance paid on Schedule A - Itemized Deductions - Line 1 - Medical and Dental expenses, unless your health insurance premiums were deducted pre-tax from your paycheck. Your employer would be able to tell you whether your health insurance is pre-tax or not. If it is pretax, then you cannot claim it on Schedule A - line 1. Even with that, you need for your medical expenses to exceed 7.5% of your AGI (1040, line 37) in order to be able to deduct the excess, and your total itemized deductions need to exceed your standard deduction. If you are self-employed, you can either claim the health insurance on Page 1 of the 1040, line 29 or on Schedule A (it depends on whether you had earned income or not). I have included a link to what medical & dental expenses are deductible.

Answer 3

You can only claim them if you itemize, and if certain other rules are met. You'd use Schedule A and include the health insurance premiums as medical expenses. You can only deduct the portion of your total medical expenses that exceed 7.5% of your adjusted gross income.

If they're taken out of your pay pretax, then you can't deduct them.

Answer 4

You really can't claim it, not directly anyway.

If you itemize, you can claim expenses above 7.5% of your Adjusted Gross Income.

Here is the link to the IRS regulations, it is a PDF document (requires Adobe Acrobat)
http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p502.pdf