charitable donations

Tax deductions can be tricky to understand if you're new to the finance world.

One of the biggest sources of confusion is knowing what you can and can't deduct from your taxes. Deductions can be a massive financial boon for a lot of people, yet not everyone files for them correctly. This causes people to miss out on money that should be theirs. We'll go over some of the most common tax deductions that are overlooked, so you don't get shortchanged when Tax Day comes.

Charitable Contributions

When you start regularly giving to charity, even if the donations are small, you'll want to start getting itemized receipts for your donations. These receipts will help you write off these charitable contributions on your taxes. You can even write off supplies that you bought for use in a charitable cause or any miles you drove on your car while in service to a charity. Make those donations to the Purple Heart Pickup with an open heart, but make sure you get your deduction on top of that.

Student Loan Interest Payments

Student loans take up a significant amount of a lot of people's money. If you're one of these people, make sure that you get a deduction on the amount of interest you paid off in the last year. What's important to remember is that even if you aren't someone's dependent, you can write off the money someone else gave you to pay for said student loans. If someone else helped you pay off part of your loan, don't think that means you can't still get a deduction on that sum.

Child and Dependent Care Credit

If you have a reimbursement account through your job that pays for child or dependent care, you might be forgiven for forgetting about this particular tax credit. However, you can use these funds for a tax credit if you file for them correctly. This is hugely important because this is an opportunity to receive a full tax credit, not just a deduction. You're losing money you could be directly receiving if you don't file for this credit.

Jury Pay Given to Your Employer

A lesser-known tax deduction that often gets overlooked is the money you can deduct from jury pay you gave to your employer. It may not be the most exciting thing to come out of jury duty, especially after handing over any money you receive to your employer, but you do get to deduct however much money your employer made you hand over after you finished jury duty.

Credit for Saving

While this credit is more for people that are working part-time or for those that have a retired spouse, you can get a tax credit for contributing to a 401(k) or another retirement savings plan. This is also a great incentive for those that are just starting out in their careers and need another reason to start saving for the future.

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The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 raised the standard deduction for US taxpayers and capped the state and local tax deduction at $10,000. This greatly reduced the number of taxpayers who itemize on their tax return and caused a major reduction in charitable giving.

Taxpayers who itemize can reduce their income by the amount that they give to eligible charities and charitable organizations, and thus pay less in taxes.

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It's a pretty good feeling to get that tax return check in the mail, but a pretty bad one to realize you forgot to include a tax deduction that would have lowered your tax bill or increased your returns. With the ever increasing complexity of the tax laws, filing taxes just gets more and more complicated. To help simplify things, we assembled a list of some of the most commonly overlooked tax breaks you should take advantage of.

State Sales Tax

Few people know that an option exists that allows you to deduct sales taxes or state income taxes off your federal income tax. In a state that doesn't have its own income tax, this can mean major savings. When filing taxes, itemizers have the choice between deducting the state income taxes or state and local sales taxes they paid. If your state doesn't have an income tax, the sales tax write-off will decidedly safe you the most money.

Charitable Donations

While most taxpayers probably know that you can write off major charitable donations, many don't know that you can also write off smaller ones. Additionally, it's possible to write off expenses paid out of pocket that allowed you to spend time working for charity, such as hiring a babysitter for your children so you can volunteer at a soup kitchen. Or, if you drove your car to charitable activities, you can deduct 14 cents per mile, plus parking and tolls paid.

Unusual Business Expenses

It may seem obvious that you can write off the cost of business expenses, but you may not know how many different kinds of business expenses that includes. As Turbotax points out, "A junkyard owner, for example, might be able to deduct the cost of cat food that encourages stray cats to hang around and keep the mice and rats away. A bodybuilder got approved to deduct the body oil he used in competition."

Health Insurance Premiums

Health care is expensive, and only getting more expensive. Luckily, the IRS takes this into account. Deductible medical expenses have to exceed 10 percent of your adjusted gross income (AGI) to be claimed as an itemized deduction in 2019, but if this is true of you, you're looking at some major savings.