Something to consider if you donate money to charity and you’re (relatively) close to the standard deduction - you can alternate the years which you itemize or take the standard deduction, and then put your donations to charity on the two year cycle and save when you take the standard deduction and then donate when you itemize.
I am not a tax lawyer. With that being said, you can still deduct State and Local Taxes (SALT), but the deduction limited to 10k. If those are the only deductions you have, then the standard deduction would be better.
My wife and I figured out how to run our lives, so that we spend little money on things that are tax deductible. It turns out that many of those things are a waste of money (ie paying interest on loans, high taxes, etc).
The difference between what the standard deduction is, and the amount of itemized deductions we are eligible to take, is like “free money”.
Yes, the standard deduction is more that what it was in the past, so if one was only deducting $10,000 on schedule A in the past, you get $12,000 with less paperwork now.
Just remember, you can only deduct what you paid (expenses) in the year you are claiming. You can’t say “I didn’t claim the year before so I’ll add the two together and then I’ll be over the standard deductions” so if you’re close every year, you’ll probably still only be close every year and not be able to claim expenses.
If your talking actual money donations it’s diffrent, then you can donate twice the amount every other year (rather that the smaller amount each year) and claim the larger donation for the year that you donated it.
You are correct. I phrased that poorly. I meant that historically the SALT was the majority of my itemizations so I can’t itemize. Not that nobody can. Thank you for calling attention to that so I don’t mislead anybody.