The Extra Standard Deduction You Get on Your 65th Birthday
Turning 65 comes with a tax gift that many retirees never fully realize they’ve received. The IRS offers an extra standard deduction for people age 65 and older. A single 64-year-old taxpayer can claim a standard deduction of $15,750 on their 2025 return, but a single 65-year-old taxpayer gets a $17,750 standard deduction for the same tax year.
If you’re married and one or both spouses are 65 or older, you also get a bigger standard deduction. If only one spouse is 65 or older, the extra amount for 2025 is $1,600, and $3,200 if both spouses are 65 or older.
The extra deduction makes it more likely you’ll take the standard deduction rather than itemize. For 2026, the extra standard deduction amount rises to $2,050. That’s a meaningful difference for someone on a fixed income, and it costs nothing to claim.
The New $6,000 Senior Bonus Deduction (2025 Through 2028)
Starting with the 2025 tax year, individuals age 65 and older are eligible for a new, temporary tax break that could reduce their taxable income by an additional $6,000 per person. This bonus deduction is designed to benefit older taxpayers and expires after 2028.
The $6,000 senior deduction applies to each eligible individual, meaning $12,000 total for a married couple where both spouses qualify. The deduction phases out for taxpayers with modified adjusted gross income over $75,000 for single filers and $150,000 for joint filers, but it is available for both itemizing and non-itemizing filers.
When you combine the new senior bonus with the base standard deduction and the existing extra standard deduction, those 65 and older could potentially deduct up to $23,750 as single filers, or up to $46,700 for couples where both spouses are 65 or older. That’s a powerful shield for retirees who rely primarily on Social Security and modest IRA withdrawals.
Qualified Charitable Distributions: The IRS’s Best-Kept Secret
A qualified charitable distribution, or QCD, is one of the most underused strategies available to retirees. The move involves a direct transfer from a pretax IRA to an eligible nonprofit. Taxpayers age 70½ or older can transfer up to $108,000 for 2025. The withdrawal won’t add to adjusted gross income and can satisfy required minimum distributions once you turn 73.
For 2026, the annual QCD limit rises to $111,000 per person. If married and both spouses qualify, each can do QCDs totaling that full amount annually. That’s a significant income exclusion that most retirees who give to charity are simply not using.
Roughly nine in ten filers don’t itemize, according to the latest IRS data, which prevents most taxpayers from claiming the standard charitable deduction. A QCD sidesteps that problem entirely, because the donation is excluded from income rather than deducted from it. That distinction matters more than most people realize.
Medical Expense Deductions That Go Unclaimed
Medical expenses can mount quickly for seniors and retirees. If your itemized medical expenses exceed 7.5% of your adjusted gross income, you can deduct them on Schedule A of Form 1040. For someone with significant healthcare costs, this threshold is not as hard to reach as it sounds.
Eligible expenses include false teeth, glasses, hearing aids, prosthetic limbs, mobility devices, hospital bills, medical fees, nursing home care, health insurance premiums, and prescriptions, among others. Many retirees simply assume these costs can’t be written off, or they don’t bother adding them up.
The Department of Health and Human Services estimates that an American turning 65 in 2025 will incur $120,900 in future long-term services and support costs over their lifetime. For those with significant long-term care bills in a given year, itemizing medical expenses rather than taking the standard deduction can make a real difference in total tax owed.
Medicare Premiums Are Deductible for Self-Employed Retirees
If you become self-employed after retirement, such as through consulting, you can deduct the premiums you pay for Medicare Part B and Part D, plus the cost of supplemental Medicare or Medigap policies, or the cost of a Medicare Advantage plan. Self-employed retirees can deduct these expenses whether or not they itemize.
You cannot claim this deduction if you’re eligible to be covered under an employer-subsidized health plan offered by either your employer or your spouse’s employer. For those who qualify, though, the savings add up fast given how steeply Medicare premiums rise with age and income.
The Credit for the Elderly or Disabled
There is a credit for the elderly or disabled that ranges from a maximum of $3,750 to $7,500 and reduces a tax bill dollar for dollar. It’s nonrefundable, meaning that if it exceeds the amount of tax you owe, you won’t get the remainder as a cash refund.
This credit is income-limited and structured in a way that makes many retirees assume they don’t qualify. The calculation factors in Social Security benefits and other nontaxable income, so the actual credit a given person receives can be modest. Still, it’s a real reduction in tax owed that goes unclaimed by a large number of eligible older filers each year. It’s worth running the numbers, especially in lower-income years.
Social Security Income Thresholds Most People Forget
Single filers whose total income, including half of their Social Security benefits, falls below $25,000 won’t pay taxes on those benefits at all. For married couples filing jointly, if combined income is under $32,000, Social Security is not taxed. These thresholds are widely misunderstood, and some retirees pay taxes on their benefits when they don’t have to.
Higher benefits may cause an increase in provisional income, resulting in a higher tax rate of up to 85 percent of Social Security being included in taxable income. Managing income strategically through Roth conversions, QCDs, or careful RMD timing can help retirees stay below those thresholds in more years. It’s one of the more complex but high-value planning opportunities available.
IRA Contributions Still Work After You Retire
If you make contributions to a traditional Individual Retirement Arrangement, a 401(k) plan, or other similar retirement accounts, those pre-tax contributions lower your taxable income. Some retirees still work part-time or consult, which means they have earned income and can still contribute.
Whether you’re still working past retirement age or independently contributing to an IRA, there may be tax savings available to you. If you are not covered by an employer plan, your contributions are fully tax-deductible. This is often overlooked because people assume retirement and IRA contributions are mutually exclusive. They are not, as long as there is earned income in the picture.
The Spousal IRA Contribution Almost Nobody Uses
Spousal contributions to traditional IRAs are one of the more overlooked tax strategies available to retired couples. This type of IRA allows one spouse to contribute to a non-working spouse’s IRA and effectively double their retirement savings for the year. It requires only that the contributing spouse has sufficient earned income.
The deductibility of the contribution depends on whether the working spouse is covered by a workplace retirement plan and on household income. For couples where one person has retired and the other continues to work, even part-time, this is a strategy worth discussing with a tax professional. The window to use it can close faster than expected as both spouses age out of working income.
The Higher Filing Threshold That Goes Unnoticed
Older people can earn a bit more income than younger workers before they have to file a federal return at all. If you’re at least 65, several thousand extra dollars of income can go untaxed. This higher threshold is a direct result of the additional standard deduction available to seniors.
The higher filing threshold means that older Americans who are not yet fully retired but are at least 65 can have a portion of additional income go untaxed entirely. Many retirees with modest Social Security income, small pensions, or minimal investment income never check whether they even need to file, and sometimes they don’t.
Final Thoughts
The tax code genuinely does offer older Americans more breaks than most people realize, and the gap between what’s available and what actually gets claimed is wider than it should be. The $6,000 senior bonus deduction is brand new. The QCD limit keeps climbing with inflation. The medical expense deduction sits unclaimed for thousands of people who are paying healthcare bills large enough to qualify.
None of these strategies require sophisticated planning. Most of them just require knowing they exist. A brief conversation with a tax professional who works with retirees can often surface deductions that have been missed for years. The cost of that conversation tends to be far smaller than the tax savings it uncovers.
AI Disclaimer: This article was created with the assistance of AI tools and reviewed by a human editor.