Standard Deduction Amounts by Filing Status (2025 Tax Year)

For tax year 2025, the return filed in 2026, the standard deduction is $15,000 for single filers and married individuals filing separately, $30,000 for married couples filing jointly, and $22,500 for heads of household. These are the IRS-set base amounts under Rev. Proc. 2024-40. Taxpayers who are 65 or older or blind add a further per-person amount on top of these figures, and dependents run a separate, smaller calculation entirely.

Note on the keyword: if you're looking for the "2024" standard deduction, the return filed in 2025, those tax year 2024 amounts were $14,600 single/MFS, $29,200 MFJ, and $21,900 HOH. This page covers tax year 2025 (filed in 2026), the current filing year as of publication.

What is the standard deduction for single filers?

The standard deduction for single filers is $15,000 for tax year 2025. Married individuals filing separately claim the same $15,000 amount. It's the flat amount a single filer can subtract from adjusted gross income without itemizing, and it applies regardless of actual expenses, whether the client spent $200 or $20,000 on deductible items last year.

What is the standard deduction for married filing jointly?

The standard deduction for married couples filing jointly is $30,000 for tax year 2025, exactly double the single-filer amount and the largest of the four filing-status brackets. A married couple filing separately doesn't get this figure; each spouse instead uses the $15,000 MFS amount. That split trips up clients more than preparers: a couple who assumes they can each claim half of $30,000 by filing separately is wrong, and the MFS amount also comes with its own restrictions if one spouse itemizes (the other spouse is generally forced to itemize too, or claim $0).

What is the standard deduction for head of household?

The standard deduction for head-of-household filers is $22,500 for tax year 2025. Head-of-household status requires the taxpayer be unmarried (or considered unmarried) and have paid more than half the cost of keeping up a home for a qualifying person. It isn't a status a preparer can default to just because a client is single with dependents on the intake sheet. Confirm the support test and the qualifying-person relationship before checking that box; an incorrectly claimed HOH status is one of the more common exam triggers on returns with dependents.

Do taxpayers 65 or older or blind get a higher standard deduction?

Yes. A taxpayer who is 65 or older, or blind, adds an additional standard deduction on top of the base amount for their filing status. For tax year 2025, the IRS additional amount is $1,600 per qualifying condition for married filers (per spouse, per condition), rising to $2,000 per condition for taxpayers who are single or head of household.

Run the math on a couple of real cases and the stacking gets clearer. A single filer who is both 65 or older and blind adds $4,000 total ($2,000 plus $2,000) on top of the $15,000 base, landing at $19,000. A married couple filing jointly where only one spouse is 65 or older adds $1,600 for that spouse alone, landing at $31,600. If both spouses are 65 or older, that's $1,600 times two, or $3,200 added to the $30,000 base, for $33,200. And if one of those spouses is also blind, add another $1,600 for that condition, for $34,800 total. Confirm the exact figure against the current-year IRS Topic 551 page before filing, since this add-on amount changes annually along with the base deduction.

What's the standard deduction limit for a dependent?

A taxpayer claimed as a dependent on someone else's return doesn't automatically get the full standard deduction for their filing status. Instead, a dependent's standard deduction is limited to the greater of $1,350 or the dependent's earned income plus $450, capped at the regular standard deduction for their filing status, for tax year 2025. In practice, this matters most for a teenager or young adult with a summer job or investment income who's still claimed as a dependent on a parent's return. A dependent with $3,000 of W-2 wages and no other income gets a standard deduction of $3,450 ($3,000 plus $450), not the full $15,000 single-filer amount. A dependent with no earned income at all, just interest or dividends, is stuck at the $1,350 floor. This limit is one of the more frequently missed items on a dependent's return, especially when the same software defaults to the full standard deduction unless the preparer manually flags dependent status.

Standard deduction by filing status: TY2025 quick table

The married-filing-jointly standard deduction of $30,000 is exactly double the single filer's $15,000, a quick sanity check when reviewing a client's return.

When does itemizing beat the standard deduction?

A client only benefits from itemizing if their itemized deductions, mortgage interest, state and local taxes (capped at $10,000 under current law), charitable gifts, and medical expenses over the AGI floor, exceed their standard deduction amount. With the standard deduction this high, most W-2 clients without a mortgage or major charitable giving won't clear that bar. The clients worth running the comparison for are usually homeowners in high-property-tax states, people with a large one-time charitable contribution, or anyone who had significant unreimbursed medical expenses during the year. Even then, the $10,000 SALT cap does a lot of the work in keeping itemized totals under the standard deduction for a lot of otherwise-itemizing clients, so don't assume a mortgage alone gets a client over the line the way it might have a decade ago.

Why this matters for return prep

Running the standard-versus-itemized comparison, not assuming one or the other, is the correct default check on every 1040 engagement before Schedule A gets attached. Skipping it on the assumption that "they always itemize" is how a firm leaves a client on Schedule A for another year after the SALT cap and the higher standard deduction have already made the standard deduction the better call.

If your firm is manually re-checking standard-vs-itemized on every return during busy season, that comparison is exactly the kind of repetitive check SignalsHQ's automation is built to flag and verify during intake.