At any age, filing taxes comes with a lot of twists and turns, but it can be especially daunting for seniors, especially if much of your income is not from working a standard job. Many of a senior’s retirement benefits, passive income, and government assistance gets taxed, and when you are not bringing in a lot of income, you need to lower your tax liability any way you can. Here are some tax breaks to consider when completing a senior’s tax return:

1. Deduct Medicare premiums
Some medicare expenses, including Medicare premiums, can be deducted from your tax liability if they are qualified. You can deduct any medicare expenses that are more than 7.5% of your adjusted gross income. Keep in mind that while Medicare premiums can reduce your tax liability, they cannot be deducted pre tax, unless a senior is self-employed.

2. Gift money to family
Regardless of age, one of the easiest ways to reduce your taxable income is to make qualified charitable donations. Unfortunately, gifts are not a tax break, but if you have a family foundation that is recognized as a charitable organization, you can make donations that will qualify you for a tax break.

3. Spouse IRA contributions
A spousal IRA is an excellent way to maximize tax breaks if one partner works and another doesn’t. This enables the partner who works to transfer income to a spouse’s traditional IRA and use those contributions as pre-tax. While there is a limit to how much can be contributed to a spouse’s IRA account, it enables you to put more money into protected retirement accounts if you’ve already maxed out your own contribution limits.

4. Bigger standard deduction
For those who are approaching the age of 65, you may not realize that the standard deduction goes up for people who are 65 years and over. For someone who is single or married filing separately, The standard deduction for the 2019 tax year goes up from $12,400 to $14,050. For those who married filing jointly, the standard deduction goes up from $24,800 to $26,100 if one spouse is over 65, and $27,400 if both spouses are over 65. Head of households will also see the standard deduction go up from $18,650 to $20,300 and a qualifying widower will fall under the same rules as married filing jointly.

5. Avoid a lump sum pension payout
For many seniors who have a pension retirement fund, it is incentivized by many financial advisers to take a lump sum of the pension and move it into a financial instrument that allows it to grow even during your retirement years, such as an annuity or other fixed-income account. However, depending on the amount of the pension, this may not always be the right idea due to the 20% rule for lump sum pension distribution. The easiest way to avoid this tax is to roll over the lump sum into a rollover IRA account. Because a rollover IRA is a pretax account, the rollover won’t trigger the 20% tax, and now you can withdraw as much as you want at any time as ordinary income while allowing your funds to grow.