Posted by LIWU95 (e-mailed in to IWA) on March 31, 1999 at 13:12:24:
A while back I attended a talk given by an accountant to local support group for a non-RSI related topic. She pointed out a very interesting deduction in USA federal tax which I had not noticed before.
IMPAIRMENT-RELATED unreimbursed employee business expenses are completely deductible. Regular employee business expenses have to exceed 2% of AGI, but impairment-related ones do not.
The IRS does not define physical disability or physical impairment. If you decided to deduct, say, the keyboard tray that your employer refused to pay for, you could possibly be audited someday and have to argue that you are impaired. However, the accountant who gave this talk had not heard of anyone being denied this status. She has MS, and deducts things in this category, and she has not been audited. The TurboTax program that I use to do my taxes did not flag this as a questionable deduction, either.
These expenses have to be work-related. They cannot be for medical care.
I am not a tax or accounting professional. I am not qualified to dispense tax advice. Here are pointers to IRS information on this subject:
To read the IRS information and decide whether you have qualified expenses, you need:
Pub 907, Tax Implications for Persons with Disabilities
Form 2106, Employee Business Expenses or form 2106-EZ
instructions for Form 2106
The IRS website is http://www.irs.ustreas.gov/