deduction anywhere for home health aide

[taxmom34]

dad has alzheimers and mom broke her hip, both in their 80's, son has POA and will be filing their tax return. He is asking about what forms to give to the home health aide that comes in to help mom and dad. i told him if he paid out more than $600 to issue 1099. now he is asking can he deduct this expense on parents return. i can't think of anywhere that he can do that. it is not a medical expense but is there somewhere on the tax return that he could claim a deduction. i'm thinking, what a shame for elderly folks who have this type of expense can't deduct it. any help in this area would be helpful and thank you in advance

[S T]

Nursing Services

See Pub 502, page 12, under Nursing Services. http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p502.pdf

I would refer you to TTB, but I haven't received my CD yet.

Sandy

[JG EA]

dad has alzheimers and mom broke her hip, both in their 80's, son has POA and will be filing their tax return. He is asking about what forms to give to the home health aide that comes in to help mom and dad.

I know you are thinking mostly about deductions and the site above can help you with that. But you also need to think about household employee reporting. Check out Schedule H instructions

told him if he paid out more than $600 to issue 1099....

Is this just private individuals hiring a home health person? Note

An information return is a tax document businesses are required to file to report certain business transactions to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

If the worker is from an agency no reporting is done. If the individual is self-employed no reporting is to be done. The parents and the son are not a business and do not file 1099's.

Again, if an individual who is not holding themselves out to others as self-employed but working for this family as an "employee" and if paid cash wages of $1,600 or more in the year,then the household employee receives a W-2 and a Schedule H is prepared for the parents to pay the FICA and FUTA taxes. If under $1600 but $1000 or morein a quarter then no W-2, but the Schedule H is used to just pay the FUTA taxes. Also the State Unemployment requirements must be met. (All of this is in the Schedule H instructions.)