How the 2025 standard deduction stacks up
For tax year 2025 the standard deduction is $14,600 for single and head-of-household filers and $29,200 for married filing jointly. That is the floor — you get it without a single receipt. Itemizing only beats it when your combined mortgage interest, SALT, charity, and unreimbursed medical exceed the floor. After the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act roughly doubled the standard deduction in 2018, the share of taxpayers who itemize dropped from about 30% to under 10%.
That number is going up. Most homeowners in high-tax states still come out ahead itemizing, and the bunching strategies we cover below can push more filers over the line every other year.
Two real examples with 2025 numbers
Example 1 — Renter, single, $72,000 W-2 in Ohio. No mortgage. State + local + auto property tax: $4,200. Church giving: $1,800. Medical expenses under the 7.5% AGI floor. Itemized total: $6,000. Standard deduction: $14,600. Standard wins by $8,600.
Example 2 — Married homeowner, $185,000 joint income in New Jersey. Mortgage interest on a $510K loan at 7.1%: $24,300. SALT — property tax $12,800 + state income tax $8,400, capped at $10,000. Charitable cash + DAF: $9,500. Medical: $0 above floor. Itemized total: $43,800. Standard deduction: $29,200. Itemized wins by $14,600 — which at a 22% marginal rate saves $3,212 in federal tax.
The comparison tool above lets you plug in your own numbers and see the gap.
The SALT cap is the reason this comparison is hard
Under the $10,000 SALT cap (TCJA, scheduled to sunset after 2025), most high-tax-state homeowners can no longer deduct everything they pay in state income + property tax. A California couple paying $22,000 in state income tax and $11,000 in property tax only gets $10,000 of it on Schedule A.
That single cap turned millions of itemizers into standard-deduction takers. Watch the 2026 rules — if the cap lapses on schedule, the comparison flips back for a lot of households.
Bunching: how to itemize every other year
The "bunching" play: push two years of deductible spending into one year so that year clears the standard deduction, then take the standard the next year. Example: instead of $9,000/year to charity, give $18,000 in even years and $0 in odd years using a donor-advised fund. If property tax is billed in January or December, pay two years in one (within the SALT cap). Schedule elective medical in a year you already expect high unreimbursed costs.
Over a two-year cycle, a married couple can clear the $29,200 floor once, take the standard the second year, and net several thousand dollars more in total deductions than they would have averaged flat.
What can be itemized on Schedule A
The five buckets: (1) Medical and dental above 7.5% of AGI. (2) State and local taxes — income or sales, plus real estate and personal property — capped at $10,000 combined. (3) Mortgage interest on up to $750,000 of acquisition debt for homes purchased after 12/15/2017 (or $1M grandfathered). (4) Charitable contributions to qualified 501(c)(3) organizations — 60% of AGI cash limit, 30% for appreciated stock, with 5-year carryforward. (5) Casualty losses, but only from federally declared disasters.
Miscellaneous 2% deductions (unreimbursed employee expenses, tax prep fees) were eliminated by TCJA — still gone for 2025.
When itemizing makes sense in one sentence
Itemize if you own in a high-tax state, carry a recent mortgage, and give to charity — or had a big medical year. Otherwise take the standard deduction, keep your records in a shoebox, and get on with your life.