Claiming stolen property on income taxes?

Question

When claiming stolen property on your income taxes, what percentage of the value do you get back of the value of the stolen property? So what I am asking is, how much can I get back from my stolen property?

Answer 1

You can claim as itemized deduction as casualty and theft loss.

Read: http://taxipay.blogspot.com/2008/05/item...

Answer 2

In my area you can not get back anything on income tax from stuff that was stolen.  Any money to get back from stolen items comes from the insurance agency.  I would call your local tax department and ask them just to be sure.

If you did not have insurance you might be out of luck.

Answer 3

Not a very high percent.  First of all, you only get ANYTHING from income tax if you itemize.  Then you subtract $100 from the amount of the loss after any insurance reimbursement, then subtract 10% of your AGI.  The amount that's left is what you can deduct.  The maximum tax benefit from a deduction is the deduction times your tax bracket.

So as an example, if your AGI is $40,000, you are in a 15% tax bracket, and the value of the stolen property was $6000 at the time it was stolen, and you had no insurance, then your deduction would be (6000 - 100 - 4000) or $1900, and the amount you'd save on your income tax because of it would be 15% of the 1900, or $285.  That's assuming that you already had enough itemized deductions to itemize.

Answer 4

You do not recover part of your loss by claiming a theft casualty loss on your income taxes.  No refund to you is produced by a casualty loss.  What you might be able to do is reduce taxes you owe.  If you owe no tax, the casualty loss results in no benefit.

For example, suppose you are in the 15% tax bracket, and the casualty loss reduces your taxable income by $1,000.  Your taxes would be reduced by a maximum of $150.