Federal Tax Plan: Health Care Expenses, Property Taxes
CHICAGO (CBS) -- House and Senate leaders finished drafting the final version of Trump's Tax Plan on Friday. President Trump wants to sign the bill before Christmas.
Health care expenses are among the areas that could be affected by the Republican federal tax plan.
The plan would change the threshold for when medical expenses become deductible from 10 percent of income to 7.5 percent. WBBM's Jim Gudas reports.
Kathy Pickering of H&R Block said that could make it much easier for people with significant medical bills to get a tax break.
"Especially for someone who is low income to begin with. Or you see it in the situation where someone lost their job, so they might have been earning good income in the first half of the year and then didn't have income the second half of the year so their overall income was lower could then take advantage of it," Pickering said.
And she points out the change would retroactively apply to this year's medical expenses.
One local financial expert said some families and homeowners could benefit the least from the Republican federal tax plan.
Lakeview Certified Public Accountant Jeff Badu said he's most concerned about the combination of a higher standard deduction and reductions in other deductions, that he said could be especially costly for families with several children.
He's also concerned about how limits in the amount of property taxes that could be deducted on federal returns would affect homeowners.
"One way to escape the $10,000 threshold is to appeal your property taxes so that you can get them at a lower rate - potentially you might downsize or switch to an investment property, that way you move from a schedule A to a schedule E," he said.
Badu claims for most homeowners there's little that can be done to change how the federal tax plan would affect such things as mortgage and property tax deductions.
