on the sale. In fact, you’ll have a $300 capital loss that can offset the tax on other capital gains.
Medical expenses are deductible to the extent they exceed 7.5% of your AGI. If your AGI for 2007 was $100,000, for example, and unreimbursed medical expenses were $8,000, the 7.5% threshold is $7,500, and you can deduct the excess $500. “You may be able to take larger deductions if you’ve paid medical bills for an aging parent, grandparent, aunt, or uncle,” says Benjamin Bohlmann, partner at Miami-based accounting firm Mallah Furman. Those medical bills could include payments to a nursing home or an assisted living facility. Get a statement showing how much of the costs were medical-related. If you paid $20,000 for assisted living, for example, and 30% was attributable to medical services, then that would be a $6,000 medical expense. “For those payments to qualify as your medical expenses, you must provide more than half of what it costs for that person to live during the year,” says Bohlmann.
“Go through your records and check your calendar to determine what goods you donated to charity for events such as church fund-raisers,” says Genevia Gee Fulbright, a CPA in Durham, North Carolina. You can estimate the value and take it as a charitable deduction. Any driving you did last year for nonprofit and church groups is also deductible, at 14 cents a mile. “Review the statement received from your main church, for donations,” says Fulbright. If you did not receive statements from churches you visited throughout the year, make sure that you pull together your checks to show how much you donated.
Also bear in mind that if you request an automatic six-month filing extension, you’ll have until Oct. 15, 2008 to cut your taxes for 2007.