Standard Deduction or Itemizing: Which Lowers Your Tax Bill?

1The 2026 standard deduction

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The extra amount applies once for each condition you meet. A single person who is both 65 and blind adds $4,100. You count as 65 on the day before your 65th birthday, so someone born on January 1 qualifies for the previous tax year. For a married couple, the amounts stack: if both spouses are 65 or older, the joint standard deduction is $32,200 plus $3,300, or $35,500, and if only one is, it is $33,850.

People 65 and older may also qualify for the separate $6,000 deduction for seniors, available for tax years 2025 through 2028, which phases out for modified adjusted gross income above $75,000, or $150,000 on a joint return. It is claimed on top of the standard deduction. Our guide to taxes at 65 and older explains who gets it.

One more point for retirees: the standard deduction does not change whether your Social Security is taxed. That test starts from your income before deductions, so a larger deduction lowers your taxable income but not the share of your benefit that is counted. Our guide to whether Social Security is taxable shows the thresholds.

2What itemizing means

Itemizing replaces the standard amount with the total of your deductible expenses, which you list on Schedule A. The main categories are:

• State and local taxes, including income or sales tax and property tax, up to a limit that rose under the 2025 law.
• Mortgage interest on a first and second home, within the loan limits.
• Charitable gifts, with a new floor of 0.5 percent of adjusted gross income beginning in 2026.
• Medical and dental costs that exceed 7.5 percent of adjusted gross income.

You choose one method or the other for the year. You cannot take the standard deduction and also deduct your mortgage interest. If you are married and file separately, the rule is stricter: if one spouse itemizes, the other must too, even when the standard amount would be higher for them.

3Which one wins

The test is only whether your itemized total is larger than the standard amount. A rough way to see where you stand is to add up the expenses in the four categories above and compare the total with your filing status in the table.

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Because the amount rose in recent years, far fewer households itemize than once did. A homeowner with a mortgage balance of a few hundred thousand dollars and high property taxes may be close. A renter, or an owner with a small mortgage, usually is not. If you are close, check whether you paid anything unusual during the year, such as a one-time medical expense or a large gift, because a single item is often what tips the total.

4Why the choice matters less than it seems

A deduction reduces taxable income, not the tax itself, so what it saves depends on your bracket. Most filers are in the 10, 12 or 22 percent brackets, which means $1,000 of extra deduction saves between $100 and $220. The gap between the standard deduction and your itemized total is what you are really deciding about, and it is often smaller than people expect. The choice also does not touch credits such as the Earned Income Tax Credit or the Child Tax Credit, which are subtracted from the tax after the deduction.

To see which method you used last year, look at your return. If Schedule A is attached, you itemized. If not, you took the standard deduction.

5When itemizing is worth planning for

Some years tip the balance. A year with a large medical bill, a new mortgage with high interest or an unusually large gift can push an itemized total past the standard amount. A household that gives to charity regularly can sometimes group two years of gifts into one, an approach called bunching, so that it itemizes in one year and takes the standard deduction in the next. The new 0.5 percent floor on charitable gifts makes small gifts less useful to itemizers, which is another reason to run both numbers before you decide.

6New in 2026: a charitable deduction without itemizing

Beginning with tax year 2026, people who take the standard deduction can deduct up to $1,000 of cash gifts to qualifying charities, or $2,000 on a joint return. Only cash counts, so clothing and property do not, and gifts to donor-advised funds are excluded. The deduction is for gifts made during the year. Keep the receipts, since a bank record alone may not show that the organization qualifies.

7If you can be claimed as a dependent

A person who can be claimed as someone else's dependent has a smaller standard deduction. For 2026 it is limited to the greater of $1,350 or earned income plus $450, and never more than the regular amount for the filing status. A teenager with a summer job and a parent claiming them is the usual case. It also applies to a student who earns a small wage while a parent claims them. Our guide to who counts as a dependent explains the tests.

9What changes each year

Amounts, limits and thresholds are adjusted for inflation or changed by law, and the figures here are for tax year 2026. This is general information and not tax advice. A tax preparer can compare both methods on your actual return.