Charlie Weston: Take time to claim back tax on your health costs
Tuesday February 09 2010
NOW is the time to set aside 40 minutes to claim back a tax refund on the medical expenses you incurred last year.
You can get 20pc of the money you spent on health expenses last year. And you can claim for the last four years.
This only applies to medical expenses not reimbursed by a private health insurer.
If you have a medical card, you cannot claim back tax on expenditure on medicines and visits to a medical practitioner.
Medical expenses include GP costs, medicines, hearing aids, home-nursing and maternity care, among others.
If you are claiming medical expenses for 2008, and you are a higher-rate taxpayer, your claim should be granted at 41pc. This means that expenses that year of €400 will generate €80 in a cheque from the taxman.
But for expenses incurred last year you will only get back 20pc of your outlay.
You will need to have kept all your receipts. If you have not kept them, your GP may accommodate you by providing you with an invoice, while your local pharmacy may have records of what you have spent if you are registered for the Drugs Payments Scheme (DPS).
Add up what you have spent on visits to medical practitioners, then total all your expenditure on prescription drugs.
You need to get a form called Med 1. You can download this from the Revenue Commissioners' website at www.revenue.ie
Fill out the form -- it is not onerous. You will need to include your P60, which gives details of your earnings in the previous tax year and the amount of tax you have paid.
If you or your spouse lost your job, you will need to provide a P45 for the unemployed person, and detail on the Med 1 form the date you started to receive Jobseeker's Benefit.
Online
Alternatively, you can do it all online if you register for PAYE Anytime with the Revenue Commissioners.
Either way it is well worth doing. For those with children, medical bills can be huge.
For example, in the Weston household, where there are two young girls, some €700 was spent on doctor and consultants fees alone last year, fees that we could not reclaim from our health insurer.
At €50 a visit to our GP -- and no, his fees have not come down, despite the recession -- it is easy to spend a small fortune on doctors.
For that outlay of €700 on doctors alone we are due back €140.
cweston@independent.ie
Irish Independent
