Most married couples filing their 2026 taxes will not itemize deductions. They will not need to dig up charitable receipts, tally property-tax payments, or calculate mortgage interest down to the penny. The reason is a single number: $32,200.
That is the new standard deduction the IRS set for married couples filing jointly in tax year 2026, an increase of $2,200 over the $30,000 figure that applied for 2025. The bump reflects annual inflation indexing combined with provisions in the One, Big, Beautiful Bill, the sweeping tax-and-spending package signed into law in 2025 as House Bill 1 of the 119th Congress. Unless a couple’s mortgage interest, charitable gifts, medical bills, and state and local taxes add up to more than $32,200, they gain nothing from itemizing.
IRS Statistics of Income data for tax year 2022, the most recent available, show that about 87% of individual returns claimed the standard deduction. That share has hovered near nine in ten ever since the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act nearly doubled the standard amount, and the higher 2026 threshold is expected to keep the ratio in that range or nudge it slightly higher.
What the IRS confirmed for 2026
The agency published the numbers in its annual inflation-adjustment package, released as IR-2025-103. That notice covers updated brackets, phaseouts, and deduction amounts for income earned during the 2026 calendar year. The binding regulatory details appear in the accompanying Internal Revenue Bulletin, the document tax-software developers and preparers rely on to build next year’s filing tools.
Standard deduction amounts for 2026, compared with 2025:
- Married filing jointly: $32,200 (up from $30,000)
- Single filers: $16,100 (up from $15,000)
- Head of household: $23,600 (up from $22,500)
Filers who are 65 or older or who are blind get an additional standard deduction on top of those amounts. For 2026, the extra amount is $1,600 per qualifying individual for married filers and $2,000 for unmarried filers. A married couple where both spouses are 65 or older would start with a combined standard deduction of $35,400 before claiming a single write-off.
The IRS also posted a separate explainer on how the new law affects individuals, walking through the way the larger standard deduction interacts with adjusted personal credits and income phaseouts. While the One, Big, Beautiful Bill itself is cataloged on Congress’s legislative site, the IRS materials translate the statutory language into the operational rules that will govern returns filed in early 2027.
Why $32,200 is so hard to beat
Think of the standard deduction as a bar that itemized write-offs must clear. Every dollar the IRS adds to it raises that bar.
Consider a married couple with a $350,000 mortgage at 6.5% interest. In their first full year of payments, when interest makes up the largest share of each monthly check, they would pay roughly $22,600 in interest. Add $10,000 in state and local taxes, and their itemized total lands around $32,600. That barely clears the standard deduction, and only if no other adjustments work against them. A couple further into their mortgage, carrying a smaller balance, or living in a low-tax state would fall short.
The math tilts even more for homeowners who refinanced into lower rates during the pandemic-era dip. Lower monthly interest payments shrink the single largest itemized deduction most taxpayers claim. And renters, who have no mortgage interest to deduct at all, almost never approach the threshold.
Single filers face a proportionally similar challenge. Their $16,100 standard deduction is half the married amount, but so is their typical income and their typical pool of deductible expenses. A single homeowner with a $200,000 mortgage at 6.5% would pay about $12,900 in first-year interest. Adding $5,000 in state income and property taxes gets them to roughly $17,900, enough to itemize, but only by a slim margin that shrinks each year as the loan amortizes.
Beyond the dollars, there is a simplicity payoff. Filers who take the standard deduction skip the year-end scramble for receipts and statements. That is one reason both the IRS and commercial tax-prep software steer users toward the standard option early in the filing process: if a household’s plausible itemized total is nowhere near the threshold, chasing down every last document is wasted effort.
How the new SALT cap fits in
One change in the One, Big, Beautiful Bill that directly affects the itemizing calculus is the state and local tax (SALT) deduction cap. The 2017 law capped the SALT deduction at $10,000, a limit that hit taxpayers in high-tax states like New York, New Jersey, and California especially hard. The new legislation raises that cap to $40,000 for married couples filing jointly, with the cap phasing down for filers with modified adjusted gross income above $400,000.
In theory, a higher SALT cap gives some households more room to itemize. In practice, the simultaneous jump in the standard deduction offsets much of that benefit for middle-income families. A couple claiming $25,000 in state and local taxes and $10,000 in mortgage interest still falls $2,800 short of $32,200 unless they have significant charitable contributions or unreimbursed medical expenses exceeding 7.5% of their adjusted gross income.
The households most likely to benefit from the higher SALT cap are those with incomes high enough to generate large state tax bills but below the phase-down threshold, and who also carry sizable mortgages. That is a real but relatively narrow slice of the filing population.
What the IRS has not yet published
The inflation-adjustment release does not project how many filers will choose the standard deduction over itemizing for 2026, and the Treasury Department has not published distributional tables showing which income brackets will see the largest shift. Revenue estimates tied specifically to the standard deduction provision within the new law have not appeared in publicly available congressional or Treasury analyses as of June 2026.
That gap makes it difficult to separate how much of the $2,200 increase comes from routine inflation indexing and how much reflects deliberate policy choices in the legislation. Until the IRS releases Statistics of Income data for tax year 2026, likely sometime in 2028, the precise share of filers taking the standard deduction will remain an informed estimate rather than a confirmed figure.
Who should still run the itemizing math for 2026
For the vast majority of households, the $32,200 threshold is high enough that itemizing will not pencil out. The narrow group that may still benefit includes couples carrying large mortgages originated at recent higher interest rates, residents of high-tax states who can now claim a SALT deduction well above the old $10,000 cap, and taxpayers with extraordinary medical bills or large charitable pledges.
Filers 65 and older should pay particular attention. Their higher standard deduction, $35,400 for a married couple where both spouses qualify, sets an even steeper bar for itemizing. But seniors with large out-of-pocket medical costs may still clear it, since the 7.5%-of-AGI floor for deducting medical expenses can be easier to meet on a fixed or reduced retirement income.
Anyone who has not revisited their filing strategy since the 2017 overhaul should run the comparison with updated 2026 figures. Most will arrive at the same conclusion they have reached every year since: the standard deduction wins, and it is not particularly close.
Warren Cohen is a finance writer based in Phoenix, Arizona, covering personal finance topics including credit, banking, and beginner investing. He earned his degree in business administration from Arizona State University and began his career working in consumer finance, where he gained direct experience with lending and credit systems. He now writes for personal finance websites and fintech platforms, focusing on clear, practical content that helps readers make informed financial decisions.
