profitable

Question from a reader, “Kim, what qualifies as disabled at tax time? ”

My answer is that if you have a letter from a medical professional stating that you have some medical disability that impacts your ability to function as anybody else might in daily living, that might qualify you as disabled.

The Disability Discrimination Act describes somebody disabled as someone with “A physical or mental impairment which has a substantial and long-term adverse effect on their ability to carry out normal day-to-day activities“.

Generally speaking it is pretty cut and dry if you have certain physical medical conditions and some psychological ones.    If you are caring for a special needs person and they are diagnosed with severe Rett Syndrome or autism and you will be taking care of them for their entire life that qualifies as them as being disabled and might qualify you as the person who can take the Head of Household status at tax time.  If you are married you and your spouse can claim grown special needs children who live at home if you are taking care of them.

When receiving government assistance you might have to go through a worksheet to insure that you are providing the financial support for the person but for the most part the person who takes care of the disabled person, pays the bills, helps them with their personal needs, etc is the person who can claim the deduction.

Note that for tax purposes if you are blind there is a separate higher standard tax deduction as well.

There is a credit for the elderly and the disabled (Schedule R) and instructions for that can be found here.  Make sure that you also write your State and local representatives to keep programs that are helping people with disabilities and special needs.

Too often this is an easy target for budget cuts (right California?) because the elderly, special needs and disabled people are perceived as not being vocal enough or are okay to cut back on.

Wrong.

People with special needs want to be included as part of society and not cast out.  People with disabilities also add value to business, commerce and are working out in the community. They pay their taxes, too, in a lot of cases!

Anyways to answer your question, there can be many things to qualify one as disabled.

March 24 2009 mid day

Interested in any of my books?  You may want to make a stop over  here. Please click through to purchase my books and some other interesting items that actually ARE on sale.   Have you read my book, “Bad Tax Idea, Good Tax”?   Please order it today.  The tips inside can save you hundreds if not thousands of dollars!

 If you are looking for a day job, part time work, suggestions for saving money or investing, please check out my book listed below.  Part of all the proceeds from the sales of that book  go  to Rett Syndrome research.  One girl is born with Rett Syndrome worldwide every fifteen minutes.   My daughter Arianna has Rett Syndrome and we are working to do all we can to make her life easier and find a cure in her lifetime.  Boys born with the Rett gene generally die at birth.

  Practical Money Making-Surviving Recession, Layoffs, Credit Problems, Generating Passive Income Streams, Working Full Time or Part Time and Retirement

Kim Isaac Greenblatt

What Qualifies As Disabled For Tax Purposes

Tags: Business, taxes

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 24th, 2009 at 12:01 pm and is filed under Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.