Is an ambulance tax deductible?

What the publication includes

The Ambulance entry is short: you can include in medical expenses amounts you pay for ambulance service. The Transportation entry repeats it. You can include bus, taxi, train or plane fares or ambulance service, as long as the transportation is primarily for and essential to medical care. A flight on an air ambulance falls within the same idea, because the purpose is medical care, but check the bill, since a charge for a non-medical portion would not.

Transportation also reaches other people. You can include the transportation expenses of a parent who must go with a child who needs medical care, and of a nurse or other person who can give injections, medications or other treatment required by a patient who is traveling to get medical care and is unable to travel alone.

Insurance is the main adjustment

Ambulance bills are often large and often partly covered. Pub 502 says you must reduce your total medical expenses for the year by all reimbursements from insurance or other sources, including Medicare. An in-network claim might leave only a balance bill. Only the amount you actually paid and were not reimbursed for goes on the list.

Timing follows payment, not the date of the emergency. If you pay by check, the day you mail or deliver it is generally the date of payment. Credit card charges count in the year of the charge. A bill you are still paying off next year is a next-year expense to the extent you pay it then.

Other transport rules and exclusions

For your own car, you can use actual out-of-pocket costs such as gas and oil, or for 2025 returns the standard medical mileage rate of 21 cents a mile, and you can add parking and tolls either way. You cannot include depreciation, insurance, general repair or maintenance. Transportation to and from work, travel for purely personal reasons to another city for care, and travel merely for the general improvement of health are all excluded.

Lodging has its own limited rule: for a trip primarily for and essential to receiving medical services in another city, you may be able to include up to $50 for each night for each person, with meals excluded.

Illustration: an emergency year

This is an illustration, not an example from the publication. AGI is $85,000, so the floor is $6,375. An ambulance ride was billed at $1,900, and insurance paid $1,300, leaving you $600. Your other unreimbursed medical costs were $6,200. The total is $6,800 and the deduction is $425. The ambulance balance was a small piece of the total, yet it moved the year over the floor, which is typical: the floor makes every includible dollar matter only once the total passes it. Use the calculator above for your numbers.

How the floor, timing and itemizing apply here

For ambulance, the same three rules from Publication 502 decide the final number. First, the deduction is only the part of your total medical and dental expenses that is more than 7.5% of your adjusted gross income, so a $1,000 cost does nothing until the year’s total passes the floor. Second, you include only what you paid during the tax year and were not reimbursed for, and you may include costs for yourself, your spouse and your dependents. Third, the deduction is claimed on Schedule A (Form 1040), so it helps only if your itemized deductions add up to more than your standard deduction. Amounts paid with a tax-free health savings account distribution cannot be counted again, and pre-tax flexible spending arrangement reimbursements are excluded.

Related medical expense topics

More from the same IRS publication: Are hearing aids tax deductible?, Is a wheelchair tax deductible?, Are funeral expenses tax deductible?. For a full calculation across all your expenses, use the medical expense deduction calculator.

Sources

• IRS Publication 502, Medical and Dental Expenses (2025): the “Ambulance; Transportation” entries, the 7.5% of AGI rule, the reimbursement rules and the transportation rules. Read November 2, 2026.

Edition read: Publication 502 (2025), for use in preparing 2025 returns. Dollar limits and rates in this publication are for 2025; the publication notes that later legislation (P.L. 119-21) may affect federal deductions, so check the current publication and the Schedule A instructions for your tax year. This page summarizes the publication and does not replace it. Marked for human review.