Subject: Medical Deduction Comment: Explain this, if you can: Taxpayers can't take a deduction for medical expenses unless those expenses total at least 7.5% of our income. But... we can participate in a medical savings account. Any contributions we make are taken from our pay before taxes... a defacto tax deduction. The catch is... whatever monies in the account that don't get used that year are forfeited! So to sum up... the tax code is set up so we have to GAMBLE in order to get a medical deduction. We're expected to guess how much we'll need to spend on medical expenses... and if we guess too high, we lose! Instead of this bizarre workaround... wouldn't it be simpler and saner to just eliminate the 7.5% minimum and let taxpayers deduct our actual medical expenses? |