A federal tax law signed in 2025 added a temporary deduction aimed at people 65 and older, in addition to the standard deductions already in place, and the rules for claiming it are worth reviewing well before the law's current end date arrives.

What Is the New Senior Deduction?

The One, Big, Beautiful Bill Act created a temporary additional deduction of $6,000 for each qualifying person age 65 or older, up to $12,000 total on a joint return if both spouses qualify, available for tax years 2025 through 2028 whether or not the taxpayer itemizes.

The deduction phases out at 6% of modified adjusted gross income (MAGI) above $75,000 for a single, head of household, or qualifying surviving spouse filer, reaching $0 at $175,000 of MAGI; for a married couple filing jointly, it phases out above $150,000 of MAGI, reaching $0 at $250,000.

Because the phase-out runs at 6 cents on every dollar of MAGI above the threshold, a filer sitting close to $75,000 or $150,000 of MAGI can lose a meaningful piece of the deduction from a fairly small increase in income that year.

Does This Deduction Replace Taxes on Social Security Benefits?

The senior deduction does not exempt Social Security benefits from federal income tax; it is a separate deduction from taxable income that can indirectly lower the share of Social Security benefits that ends up taxable for some filers.

Social Security benefits become partly taxable once combined income passes set thresholds: up to 50% of benefits can be taxable between $25,000 and $34,000 of combined income for a single filer ($32,000 to $44,000 for a married couple filing jointly), and up to 85% can be taxable above those upper amounts; these thresholds are fixed by statute and are not adjusted for inflation.

How Does the Senior Deduction Stack With Other Deductions?

For 2026, the regular standard deduction is $16,100 for a single filer, $24,150 for a head of household, or $32,200 for a married couple filing jointly.

A taxpayer who is 65 or older can also add an existing age-based standard deduction beyond that amount: $2,050 if unmarried and not a surviving spouse, or $1,650 per qualifying spouse age 65 or older on a joint return. The new senior deduction is claimed in addition to both of these amounts, not instead of them.

Why Does the Timing of Other Income Matter?

Because the senior deduction phases out based on MAGI, a decision that raises MAGI in a given year can shrink or erase the deduction for that year even though that decision may still make sense for other reasons.

Required minimum distributions from a traditional IRA or workplace plan generally must begin at age 73 and count as taxable income that raises MAGI, which is one more reason to review the years immediately before and after RMDs start when weighing whether and when to convert.

Medicare Part B and Part D premiums are also tied to a version of MAGI from an earlier tax return. A year with unusually high income for any reason, including a Roth conversion, is worth checking against those separate thresholds as well, not just against the senior deduction's own cutoff.

What Should Someone Do Before Relying on This Deduction?

Because the deduction is scheduled to end after the 2028 tax year unless Congress acts again, a plan built around it should treat 2025 through 2028 as a defined window, not a permanent feature of the tax code.

A tax professional can run the numbers for a specific MAGI, filing status, and set of income sources to confirm whether the full $6,000, or $12,000 on a joint return, is available in a given year, and how a Roth conversion or an unusually large distribution would change that.

Married couples where only one spouse is 65 or older still qualify for a single $6,000 deduction tied to that spouse, while a couple where both spouses are 65 or older before the end of the tax year can claim $6,000 for each of them against the shared $150,000 MAGI threshold.

How much of this applies to a specific Owens Corning employee depends on their own income sources and timeline, including what Owens Corning's retirement and healthcare benefits provide to fill the gap between leaving work and claiming Social Security or Medicare.

What should Owens Corning employees check before claiming the senior deduction?

Owens Corning's own retirement benefits shape how large that income bump looks the year someone claims this deduction. At separation, the Owens Corning Savings Plan lets a departing employee take the vested balance as a lump sum, through installments, or deferred until age 70 1/2 if the amount is more than $1,000. Within the pension's Hourly Employees Retirement Plan Benefit Part, a retiree can instead choose a lump sum, a period-certain annuity, or a continuing payment to a survivor, though for some participants the lump sum only covers the benefit earned before 1995. Owens Corning's own retiree medical plan, separate from its active-employee coverage, covered 847 people in 2024 with medical-only benefits. Lining up which of these choices applies, and in which year, is worth doing before assuming a given year's income picture.