Medical Deduction

[Kram BergGold]

Client's wife is disabled. They spent $450,000 making the place user friendly for the disabled. FMV increased by $350,.000 due to work, so $75,000 is medical. The $450k was paid over 2013 and 2014.
Lets say $150,000 paid in 2013 and $300,000 in 2014. To me, the way to look at this is to claim the medical deduction in 2014. That prior to completion there was no deduction to compute. And since way more than $75,000 was paid in 2014 that is the right time to claim.
Obviously, the other way is to do a proportional thing but this would make the deduction probably worthless as they have AGI of $350,000.
Any thoughts?

[JohnH]

When there is some ambguity about when to take a deduction, I always favor taking it in the earliest year possible. That preserves the deduction due to the possibliity of the prior year being determined as the correct one in an audit of a subsequent year when the correct year is past the SOL. The converse is also true in that it also protects the deduction by having the SOL run earlier for the deduction itself. The only downside would be if there is a signficant difference in tax rates between the two years, which doesn't appear to be the case here.

One argument in favor of taking the deduction in the earlier year would be that none of the work would have been undertaken if not for the medical reasons.

[Kram BergGold]

JohnH

Excellant Points.
Thanks