Repeal of Senior Std Deduction

[ruthc]

I thought the additional std. deduction for seniors over 65 yrs old was eliminated and they would just be able to use the new standard deduction. I was reading an article that said it was not repealed. It was retained. Has anyone read it was retained?

[JudyL]

for 2018 the amounts will be...

Brief excerpt from a reliable tax newsletter:

Standard deductions nearly double to $24,000 for couples, $12,000 for singles and $18,000 for household heads.
Folks age 65 or up and blind people get $1,250 more per person ($1,550 if unmarried).

FE

^^ those are the amounts for 2017, but in general FEDUKE404 is correct - the new tax legislation retained the add'l std deduction for elderly and blind. You won't find anything about this add'l deduction allowed in the new law because it wasn't mentioned.

The amounts for this are ones that are indexed for inflation, and those amounts were issued by the IRS in Rev Proc 2017-58 back in November. The 2018 amount will be an add'l $1,300 for the aged or blind, and $1,600 if also unmarried and not a surviving spouse. It's on page 14 here in this link to the Rev Proc: https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-drop/rp-17-58.pdf

[ruthc]

Thank you!

Thanks for your responses. I do a lot of seniors' returns and they will be hapy to hear the deduction is still there!
Happy New Year to all!

[JudyL]

Sorry FE, I see that my post bothered you. As I said, the cite I posted was to the inflation-related increases that the IRS published back in November, and at that time neither the IRS nor anyone else knew that the tax law would pass, so it obviously includes some items that have been repealed. We have all the other inflation-related adjustments to work with also that were published by the IRS prior to the new law that will also apply going forward that weren't repealed, adjusted, or changed by the new legislation, so at this point, we have to apply what we know and have to work with and piece things together.

I do have several excellent newsletter-style sources that people here may find useful:

Here's 167 pages of analysis published by KPMG that simply says: "The new law retains the additional standard deduction for the elderly and the blind." https://home.kpmg.com/content/dam/kp...dec22-2017.pdf

And this shorter summary published by CCH that is accessible to the public on their website that does mention the higher $1,300/$1,600 limit on page 2 here: https://www.cchgroup.com/media/wk/ta...ts-job-act.pdf