I have been doing taxes using Credit Karma, which was recently acquired by Cash App. I just realized I have made a mistake in the past few years by not itemizing my deductions on my state (Arkansas) income taxes.

When the standard deduction on federal taxes became $27,000 a couple, I just stopped paying attention to how much we gave to charities or spent on medical expenses. Our mortgage was paid off, and when my husband's VA disability was increased to 100%, the state said we no longer had to pay property or personal property taxes. (Yes, we have been blessed by that, and I am grateful.)

Today I realized that the state standard deduction for a couple is only $4400--a much lower threshold we could meet. True, we could only deduct medical expenses over 10% of our income, but Arkansas didn't count our veterans disability or Social Security benef its as "income," and so our Arkansas income was a much lower total than our federal income.

I think our Arkansas state income taxes were about 5% of what our Arkansas "income" was. And we had two sets of Medicare Part B premiums, my Medicare supplement, dental and vision and prescription insurance, my deductibles (minimal) and dental expenses. He has no medical expenses (and given his many health issues, I am grateful.)

Then we have all of our charitable deductions, and I know we should get something decent back on an amended return. And I can look back for 2019 and 2020, too.

Yes, I said I have a consumer geek side.

So I began to wonder whether the rest of you who do your own taxes might have made the same mistake and stopped keeping track of your donations and medical expenses because how in the world would they ever approach $27,000?

I haven't started the amended state returns yet (to do list) but I hope this advice might help others.

We do ours thru Tax Hawk & have pretty much done as you once the standard deduction changed. Now you have me curious to go check on my state taxes. We are in Indiana.

A co-worker tried to do the Federal one way and the state another and it caused him a lot of problems.     They want you to do the returns the same way here in Georgia - both using standard or both being itemized.      

I don't worry about charitable, medical or any deducations for my state income tax return. That's because Florida doesn't have a state income tax. And---this is the best part---no state income tax is part of the Florida state constitution. Which means if the legislature wants to enact a state income tax, it has to go to the residents of Florida to vote on it to amend the constitution. And what do you think the possibily of that being passed is ?

This is a holdover from the days when Florida needed to lure people to move here due to conditions, like insects, heat, humidity, no A/C, etc. We don't have that problem any more. As some of my native-born Floridian friends say, "Teach a Yankee how to drive. Print his car north."

A lady friend of mine who lives in Delaware, who works for H&R Block and often does taxes for snow-birds who live part of the year in Florida, likes to tell them she is an expert on Florida state income tax.