Are Medical Alert Systems Tax-Deductible?

Many senior adults need additional assistance as they age, including making some changes to their homes. If any of these changes are medically necessary, they may be deductible when it comes to tax time. Home improvements can include things like widening doorways to accommodate wheelchairs, installing railings or support bars in bathrooms to prevent falls, or modifying kitchen cabinets and equipment to make them more wheelchair accessible. Because these types of home improvements can be deductible, you might wonder what else could be deductible that is health-related.

Is a medical alert system tax-deductible? The short answer is largely NO, but a system that specifically stores your medical information IS deductible according to the IRS, so with some of the systems the answer may be YES.

According to the details found in the Medical Information Plan section of the IRS website, the IRS includes such medical expenses “paid to a plan that keeps medical information in a computer data bank and retrieves and furnishes the information upon request to an attending physician.”

Some medical alert systems seem to fall into this description, for example when operators who answer calls 24/7 store your personal medical profile in a proprietary computer database. Such a usage is to allow them to provide the appropriate and necessary medical information to healthcare providers in any emergency situation. So if you or a dependent adult claim itemized deductions for medical expenses, you may be able to include the alert system as a deduction.

(Note that the allowed deduction only kicks in for that portion of the expense that is greater than 7.5 percent of adjusted gross income – so any expense up to and equal to the 7.5 percent is not deductible. If you have many deductions you may already be over this threshold.)

Caregivers to dependent adults frequently incur multiple healthcare expenses of course, and these should be examined for deductibility. If you are a family member who is the primary caregiver of a dependent adult (which applies to adult children as well as aging relatives), you may be picking up a lot of expenses that can be deducted at tax time. If you keep detailed records of the expenses that are solely related to caring for the dependent adult, the family members responsible may find this information useful.

Be sure to check with your personal accountant before you fill out tax forms to make sure that you have the latest tax information and reliable knowledge as to what’s applicable to your situation.