The 2017 law nearly ended itemizing. A 2025 law just reopened it, for four years.

In 2017, just under a third of all federal tax returns itemized deductions. By 2022, fewer than one in ten did.

That is the whole story in one sentence, and it is worth sitting with, because for decades itemizing was the thing a middle-class household did once it bought a home. You added up the mortgage interest, the state and local taxes, the charitable gifts, and if the total beat the standard deduction, you itemized. Tens of millions of people did.

Then one law changed the arithmetic for almost all of them, and a second law, passed in 2025, has just changed it back for some of them, on a timer.

Here is what the IRS actually recorded, and where on the income ladder itemizing still wins.

How far did itemizing fall after the 2017 law?

The share of returns claiming itemized deductions fell from 30.6 percent in 2017 to 9.5 percent in 2022, according to IRS Statistics of Income data. That is about 15.3 million returns out of more than 160 million. The share taking the standard deduction rose from 69.4 percent to 90.5 percent. The total dollars itemized fell from 1.4 trillion to 668 billion.

The 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act did two things at once. It nearly doubled the standard deduction, from 6,500 to 12,000 dollars for a single filer and from 13,000 to 24,000 for a married couple. And it capped the state and local tax deduction, the SALT deduction, at 10,000 dollars, where before there had been no cap.

Doubling the standard deduction raised the bar every itemizer has to clear. Capping SALT knocked the legs out from under the largest thing most of them were stacking up to clear it. Together the two changes did not trim itemizing. They collapsed it.

Who still itemizes, by income?

Itemizing survived at the top of the income distribution and almost nowhere else. In 2022, 1.4 percent of filers earning under 25,000 dollars itemized, 9.8 percent of those earning 50,000 to 100,000, and 22.5 percent of those earning 100,000 to 500,000. Above half a million dollars it stayed common: 53.9 percent at 500,000 to 1 million, and 69.4 percent above 1 million.

The clearest way to see what the law did is to line up each income band before and after. This is IRS Statistics of Income data, tax year 2017 against tax year 2022.

Read the middle rows first, because that is where the law landed hardest.

Which income group lost itemizing the most?

In proportional terms the middle-income and upper-middle-income bands were hit hardest. Itemizing among filers earning 50,000 to 100,000 dollars fell from 43.2 percent to 9.8 percent. Among those earning 100,000 to 500,000 it fell from 80.0 percent to 22.5 percent. A deduction that a large majority of the affluent-but-not-rich once used became a minority move.

That 100,000-to-500,000 row is the center of gravity of the whole change. Before 2017, four in five of these households itemized. After it, fewer than one in four did. These are the two-earner professional households, often with a mortgage and a real state tax bill, who had always been the natural itemizers. The standard deduction got tall enough, and their SALT deduction got short enough, that the standard deduction simply won.

At the very top the deduction held up better, because the people there have the biggest mortgages, the largest charitable gifts, and state tax bills that blow through any cap. Even a 10,000 dollar SALT limit does not change the decision for someone paying 90,000 in state tax. So above a million dollars, itemizing only slipped from 91.5 percent to 69.4 percent. It bent. It did not break.

What made itemizing collapse, the standard deduction or the SALT cap?

Both, but the SALT cap did the visible damage to the dollar totals. The number of returns claiming SALT fell from 30.4 percent to 9.3 percent, and the total SALT deducted fell from 624.8 billion dollars to 125.2 billion, a drop of about 80 percent. No other itemized deduction fell nearly as far in dollar terms.

The other large deductions shrank too, but through the side door. The charitable deduction was not cut. Yet the share of returns claiming it fell from 24.8 percent to 7.5 percent, because once a household takes the standard deduction, it stops itemizing charity even if it still gives. The gift did not necessarily stop. The tax benefit did. The same happened to mortgage interest, where the claim rate fell from 22.1 percent to 7.2 percent.

This is the quiet part of what the 2017 law did. It did not repeal the mortgage and charitable deductions. It made the standard deduction so much larger that tens of millions of people stopped reaching the point where those deductions do anything at all.

What did the 2025 law change?

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act, passed in 2025, made the 2017 standard deduction permanent and, more consequentially for itemizing, raised the SALT cap. The cap goes from 10,000 dollars to 40,000 for 2025 and 40,400 for 2026, rising one percent a year through 2029. It then reverts to 10,000 dollars in 2030.

This is the reopening. For the households in the 100,000-to-500,000 band who lost itemizing in 2018 mostly because their state and local taxes were cut off at 10,000, a 40,400 dollar cap changes the sum. Someone in New Jersey or California or New York paying, say, 25,000 in combined state income and property tax could deduct 10,000 of it under the old cap and now can deduct all of it. Add a mortgage and some charitable giving, and itemizing can beat the standard deduction again.

There are two catches, and they matter. The higher cap phases out for very high earners, starting around 505,000 dollars of modified adjusted gross income in 2026, so the people it helps most are the upper-middle, not the top. And it is temporary. In 2030 the cap is scheduled to snap back to 10,000 dollars, which would send most of these households back to the standard deduction. The window is 2025 through 2029.

Should you itemize now?

You should itemize only if your total itemized deductions beat your standard deduction, and after two rounds of law changes that threshold is higher and moving. For 2026 the standard deduction is 16,100 dollars for a single filer, 32,200 for a married couple filing jointly, and 24,150 for a head of household, per the IRS. Your itemized deductions have to clear that number to be worth claiming.

The practical guidance follows the data. If you earn under 100,000 dollars, itemizing almost certainly loses. Fewer than one in ten filers in that range benefit, and unless you have a large mortgage or an unusually high medical or charitable year, the standard deduction is not a fallback, it is the right answer. Do the addition once to be sure, then stop.

If you earn into the low or middle six figures and live in a high-tax state, 2026 is the year to run the numbers again even if itemizing lost for you every year since 2017. The 40,400 dollar SALT cap is the variable that changed. Total your state income tax, property tax, mortgage interest, and charitable gifts. If the sum beats 32,200 dollars for a couple, you itemize, possibly for the first time in eight years.

And if you are doing multiyear planning, the deductible things you can time, charitable gifts especially, are worth more inside the 2025-to-2029 window than they are likely to be after it. Bunching two years of giving into one year, so that the combined total clears the standard deduction, is a standard move that the temporary SALT cap makes more attractive for more people than it has been since 2017. This is general information about how the rules work, not advice about your return.

What this data does not tell you

The honest limits, because an analysis that lists only its findings is an advertisement.

The itemizing figures are from 2022. IRS Statistics of Income data lags two to three years, and 2022 is the most recent complete year published. That is a real limitation here, because the whole point of the 2025 law is that it changed the SALT cap starting in 2025. The by-income table above shows the world under the 10,000 dollar cap. It cannot yet show the world under the 40,400 dollar cap, because those returns are still being filed and tabulated. The direction is clear. The magnitude is not yet measured.

The income bands are broad. A 100,000-to-500,000 dollar band covers a household in a low-tax state with no mortgage and a household in Manhattan with a large one. They sit in the same row and made opposite decisions. The 22.5 percent average hides that spread. Use it to understand the shape of the change, not to predict your own return.

The state figures move the averages. Itemizing fell everywhere, but it fell from very different starting points. In 2017, 46.7 percent of Maryland returns itemized, the highest of any state; by 2022 it was 20.0 percent. In a low-tax state the rate was in the twenties before and the single digits after. The national number is an average of very different states, and the reopening under the higher SALT cap will help filers in high-tax states far more than anyone else.

We did not tabulate this ourselves. The itemizing figures are IRS Statistics of Income data, compiled and charted by USAFacts in a 2025 data brief, which is the accessible form of tables the IRS publishes in a format most people cannot easily read. We have carried the numbers through to their source. The 2026 standard deduction and SALT figures are from the IRS directly.

The sources, so you can check us

The itemizing series is IRS Statistics of Income, the agency's tabulation of individual returns by size of adjusted gross income. The by-income and by-state tables above are drawn from USAFacts' compilation of that SOI data, published July 2025, which reproduces the underlying IRS tables. The 2026 standard deduction, the SALT cap schedule, and the phase-out are from the IRS release on tax year 2026 inflation adjustments.

If we have made an arithmetic error, or if you can point to a more recent SOI tabulation than 2022, write to corrections@moneyandworld.com and we will correct this and say that we did.

Frequently asked questions

What percentage of taxpayers itemize now? About 9.5 percent, or roughly 15.3 million returns, as of tax year 2022, the most recent IRS Statistics of Income data. Before the 2017 law it was 30.6 percent. The remaining nine in ten filers take the standard deduction.

Why did so many people stop itemizing? The 2017 tax law nearly doubled the standard deduction and capped the state and local tax deduction at 10,000 dollars. A taller standard deduction and a shorter SALT deduction meant most households could no longer stack enough itemized deductions to beat the standard amount.

Does the higher SALT cap mean I should itemize again? Possibly, if you live in a high-tax state and earn into the six figures. The cap rose to 40,400 dollars for 2026, which can push your total itemized deductions above the standard deduction again. Total your state and local taxes, mortgage interest, and charitable gifts, and compare the sum to your standard deduction.

When does the higher SALT cap expire? It is scheduled to revert to 10,000 dollars in 2030. The elevated cap applies to tax years 2025 through 2029, rising one percent a year, before snapping back.

What is the standard deduction for 2026? 16,100 dollars for single filers, 32,200 for married couples filing jointly, and 24,150 for heads of household, according to the IRS. Filers who are 65 or older get an additional amount on top.