Are surrogacy expenses tax deductible?

Why the surrogate’s costs are excluded

The explanation in Pub 502 is about who the care is for. Medical expenses are ones you pay for yourself, your spouse and your dependents. A gestational surrogate is none of these, so the publication lists four kinds of payment as not includible: identification of the surrogate, retention, compensation, and the surrogate’s medical care. Agency fees and legal costs tied to arranging the surrogacy are not named in the entry, so do not assume they qualify, and get advice for your facts.

What can still count: fertility enhancement

The Fertility Enhancement entry is the other side of the same coin. You can include the cost of procedures performed on yourself, your spouse or your dependent to overcome an inability to have children. The publication lists procedures such as in vitro fertilization, including temporary storage of eggs or sperm, and surgery, including an operation to reverse prior surgery that prevented the person from having children. The entry itself points to the surrogacy exclusion, which shows the two are meant to be read together.

So the line is the patient. Egg retrieval from you is a procedure on you. The care of the person carrying the pregnancy is care for an unrelated party.

Other nearby entries

Related items on the includible side are birth control pills prescribed by a doctor, a pregnancy test kit, and legal operations that are not cosmetic. Maternity clothes are on the excluded list.

Illustration with numbers

This is an illustration, not an example from the publication. AGI is $120,000, so the floor is $9,000. In a year you pay $14,000 for IVF procedures on you after insurance, and $40,000 in compensation and medical care for a gestational surrogate. Only the $14,000 is counted. The deduction is $5,000. Including the $40,000 would have overstated it by $40,000.

Records and common mistakes

If you have both kinds of costs in the same year, keep them in separate records from the start. Invoices from a fertility clinic for procedures on you or your spouse belong in one folder, and agency, legal, compensation and medical payments for the surrogate belong in another that does not go into the Schedule A total. The most common mistake is giving the preparer one combined figure from a clinic or agency that bundles both. Ask the provider to itemize. Reimbursements from insurance for your own procedures still reduce your total, and amounts paid from a health savings account cannot be counted again. Because this area mixes medical, legal and family-law questions, a tax professional should review it.

How the floor, timing and itemizing apply here

For surrogacy expenses, 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 condoms tax deductible?, Are vitamins and supplements tax deductible?, Is oxygen tax deductible?. For a full calculation across all your expenses, use the medical expense deduction calculator, and see whether itemizing beats the standard deduction.

Sources

• IRS Publication 502, Medical and Dental Expenses (2025): the “Surrogacy Expenses”, “Fertility Enhancement” and “Maternity Clothes” entries, the 7.5% of AGI rule and the reimbursement 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.