For the 2026 tax year, the long-term care insurance premium tax deduction is capped by your age at the end of the year, ranging from $500 if you’re 40 or under to $6,200 if you’re over 70. Whether that cap actually lowers your tax bill depends on how you claim it: itemizers run into a 7.5% AGI floor, self-employed filers get a cleaner above-the-line deduction, and premiums paid through an employer or a Health Savings Account come with their own rules.
2026 Age-Based Premium Caps
Internal Revenue Code Section 213(d)(10) sets the maximum premium you can treat as a medical expense each year, and the IRS adjusts the amounts for inflation. For 2026, the limits per covered person are:
- Age 40 or under: $500
- Age 41 to 50: $930
- Age 51 to 60: $1,860
- Age 61 to 70: $4,960
- Over age 70: $6,200
Your age is fixed as of December 31 of the tax year, not the date you bought the policy or paid the premium.1Internal Revenue Service. Revenue Procedure 2025-32 Pay $7,000 in premiums at age 72 and only $6,200 counts; the extra $800 has no tax benefit. The caps apply the same way whether you deduct as an itemizer or as a self-employed taxpayer.
The Policy Has to Be Tax-Qualified
None of this works unless your contract is a “qualified long-term care insurance contract” under Section 7702B. The policy has to be guaranteed renewable, can only cover qualified long-term care services, cannot duplicate Medicare benefits, cannot have a cash surrender value, and cannot be used as loan collateral. Any refunds or dividends must reduce future premiums or increase future benefits rather than pay cash.2Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 26 USC 7702B – Treatment of Qualified Long-Term Care Insurance Check your contract for a reference to Section 7702B before assuming any premium is deductible.
Hybrid policies that bundle long-term care with life insurance often fall outside these rules. Many are built under Section 101(g) rather than 7702B and don’t qualify at all. Some do carry a separately identifiable, 7702B-compliant long-term care component; in that case, only the premium allocated to the LTC portion can be counted, and only if the insurer states it separately. Without that separation, the entire hybrid premium is nondeductible.
Claiming the Deduction as an Itemizer
If you’re not self-employed, long-term care premiums are deductible only on Schedule A of Form 1040. The age-capped premium goes into the same pool as your other unreimbursed medical costs, and only the total above 7.5% of your adjusted gross income is deductible.3Internal Revenue Service. Topic No. 502, Medical and Dental Expenses
That floor is where most people’s deduction disappears. On $100,000 of AGI, your medical expenses have to clear $7,500 before a single dollar becomes deductible. If your qualifying medical costs (including $4,960 of age-capped LTC premiums) total $9,000, you deduct $1,500. And itemizing only helps if your itemized total beats the standard deduction. For plenty of taxpayers with moderate medical costs, the premium ends up producing no federal tax savings through this route.
The Better Deal for Self-Employed Taxpayers
Sole proprietors, partners, and more-than-2% S corporation shareholders can deduct qualified long-term care premiums as an adjustment to income instead of itemizing. This above-the-line deduction skips the 7.5% AGI floor, so every dollar up to the age cap reduces taxable income.4Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Form 7206 – Self-Employed Health Insurance Deduction
Two limits worth knowing. The deduction can’t exceed your net self-employment income for the year; a business loss zeros it out. And you’re disqualified for any month you were eligible for a subsidized health plan through your spouse’s employer, even without enrolling. The IRS applies the employer-plan rule separately to long-term care, so being eligible for your spouse’s medical coverage doesn’t kill your LTC deduction unless that employer plan also included long-term care.4Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Form 7206 – Self-Employed Health Insurance Deduction
If you’re calculating the self-employed health insurance deduction using long-term care premiums, the IRS requires Form 7206 rather than the simpler Form 1040 worksheet. The result flows to Schedule 1 (Form 1040), line 17.
S Corporation Shareholders
A more-than-2% S corp shareholder follows a specific path. The corporation pays the premium and reports it as wages in Box 1 of the shareholder-employee’s W-2, but not in Boxes 3 and 5, so it isn’t hit with Social Security or Medicare tax when paid under a plan covering all or a class of employees.5Internal Revenue Service. S Corporation Compensation and Medical Insurance Issues The shareholder then claims the self-employed health insurance deduction on the personal return, subject to the same age caps.
Fallback to Schedule A
Premiums above your age cap, or that you couldn’t deduct as self-employed because business income was too low, can still go on Schedule A if your total medical expenses clear the 7.5% AGI threshold.4Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Form 7206 – Self-Employed Health Insurance Deduction
Married Couples
The age caps are per person, not per return. Each spouse who carries a qualified policy uses their own bracket. A couple where one spouse is 58 and the other is 65 can count up to $1,860 plus $4,960, for $6,820 of qualifying premiums in 2026.1Internal Revenue Service. Revenue Procedure 2025-32 Premiums you pay for a spouse or dependent count too, capped by that person’s age bracket.
Employer-Paid Premiums
When a C corporation buys a tax-qualified long-term care policy for employees, the treatment is unusually favorable. The corporation deducts the full premium as a business expense with no age-based cap, and the employee excludes the employer-paid premium from adjusted gross income entirely. Relatively few employers offer this coverage, but where it exists it is one of the most tax-efficient ways to fund a policy.
If the employer pays only part of the premium, the employer’s share is still fully deductible by the business and excluded from the employee’s income. The employee can then run their own portion through the Schedule A route, still bounded by the age caps and the 7.5% AGI floor.
Paying Premiums From an HSA
Money withdrawn from a Health Savings Account to pay qualified long-term care insurance premiums is tax-free, subject to the same Section 213(d)(10) age caps. A 55-year-old can pull up to $1,860 from an HSA in 2026 for LTC premiums with no income tax and no 20% early-withdrawal penalty.6Internal Revenue Service. Publication 969 – Health Savings Accounts and Other Tax-Favored Health Plans
Long-term care insurance is one of the few health coverage types you can actually pay for with HSA funds; most other health insurance premiums can’t be paid this way. If both spouses have HSAs and separate LTC policies, each can take tax-free distributions up to their own age cap. What you cannot do is double-dip: premiums paid from your HSA can’t also be deducted on Schedule A or as a self-employed health insurance deduction.
Documentation and Where the Numbers Go
Hold on to the annual premium statement from your insurer. It shows the exact amount paid during the calendar year and should confirm the policy’s tax-qualified status under Section 7702B. Itemizers report the age-capped premium with other medical expenses on Schedule A (Form 1040).7Internal Revenue Service. Publication 502 – Medical and Dental Expenses Self-employed filers use Form 7206 and carry the result to Schedule 1.