Under United States tax law, itemized deductions are eligible expenses that individual taxpayers can claim on federal income tax returns and which decrease their taxable income, and are claimable in place of a standard deduction, if available.
Alternatively, they can elect to subtract the standard deduction for their filing status to arrive at the taxable income.
The United States has a comparatively large and complicated number of deductions owing to policymakers' preference to pass policy through the tax code.
For tax years before 2018: Miscellaneous itemized deductions are subject to a 2% floor,[5] a.k.a.
[7] Examples include: The amount of itemized deductions was limited and phased out for high income taxpayers for tax years before 2017; however, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 eliminated the phaseout and limitations.