Are Scrubs and Work Clothes Tax Deductible in 2026?

Are Work Clothes Tax Deductible in 2026? It Depends on Your Tax Form, Not Your Job

Two nurses can stand in the same operating room, buy the same scrub set at the same store, and get opposite answers. The difference is whether they are an employee or a business.

You are	Where the cost would go	2026 answer
A W-2 employee, reimbursed by nobody	Schedule A, as a miscellaneous itemized deduction	Not deductible at all. Publication 529: you can no longer claim any miscellaneous itemized deductions that are subject to the 2 percent-of-AGI limitation, including unreimbursed employee expenses.
A W-2 employee whose employer reimburses the kit under an accountable plan	Nowhere on your return	A tax-free payment, and better than a deduction. The reimbursement is excluded from your gross income and never appears as W-2 wages.
A 1099 independent contractor	Schedule C, in the supplies or other-expenses lines	Deductible in full if the clothing is required for the work and is not suitable for everyday wear. The dry cleaning rides along with it.
One of the five employment categories still allowed to file Form 2106	Schedule 1 or Schedule A depending on the item	Still no for the uniform itself, and Publication 529 prints an example proving it, below.

That is the whole map. Everything after this is one of its four squares.

Why the Employee Deduction Is Not Coming Back

For 2018 through 2025 the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act suspended miscellaneous itemized deductions, and countless pages still describe it that way, as if 2026 were the year the deduction returns. It is not. Section 70110(a) of P.L. 119-21, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act signed on July 4, 2025, rewrote the suspension so it has no end date: it substituted “beginning after 2017” for the old “2018 through 2025” in the heading, and struck the words “and before January 1, 2026” out of the text. The provision, now numbered 67(h), reads: Notwithstanding subsection (a), no miscellaneous itemized deduction shall be allowed for any taxable year beginning after December 31, 2017.

The IRS statement moved the same way. Publication 529, the page on miscellaneous deductions, was last reviewed 30 April 2026 and now opens with the flat version of the sentence, with no window and no sunset: You can no longer claim any miscellaneous itemized deductions that are subject to the 2%-of-AGI limitation, including unreimbursed employee expenses.

So a W-2 nurse who spends $800 a year on scrubs, shoes and their cleaning gets back $0. Not at the 10 percent bracket, not at 37 percent, not by itemizing instead of taking the standard deduction. The expense is simply not on the return.

Even the Exceptions Do Not Cover Uniforms

Publication 529 still names five categories of employment that can claim certain employee business expenses: armed forces reservists, armed forces reservists traveling more than 100 miles from home, qualified performing artists, fee-basis state or local government officials, and employees with impairment-related work expenses. A nurse is none of them. It is still worth seeing how narrow even those doors are. The publication’s own worked example is Debra Smith, an army reservist who pays for her own uniforms and the cost of cleaning those uniforms. She puts $500 of travel and $250 of uniforms and cleaning on Form 2106. The ruling on her return: “Only the transportation expenses for travel as a reservist are deductible as an adjustment on her Schedule 1 (Form 1040). The $250 is a miscellaneous itemized deduction and is not deductible.”

The one clothing item the exception list does cover belongs to a different profession entirely: qualified performing artists can deduct “theatrical clothing and accessories that aren’t suitable for everyday wear”. That sentence is the clearest remaining proof of what the test is about, which is the next section.

The Two-Part Test That Decides Whether It Is a Uniform

The IRS test for work clothing is old and it is short. Publication 5138, the employer’s guide to fringe benefits, states it as the two conditions under which an employer can hand an employee clothing without it becoming taxable income:

• The employee must wear the clothing as a condition of employment, and
• The clothes are not suitable for everyday wear.

Then it closes both of the doors people try to sneak through: “It is not enough that the employee wear distinctive clothing; the employer must specifically require the clothing as a working condition.” And: “Nor is the test met because the employee does not, in fact, wear the work clothes away from work. The clothing must not be suitable for taking the place of regular clothing.” Its counter-example is a detective’s suit jacket, which is required and distinctive-looking and still fails, because a suit jacket can be worn off duty.

Applied to a nurse, the test sorts most purchases into three piles:

What you bought	Required by the employer	Suitable for everyday wear?	Result on a 1099 return
Hospital-issued color with a logo, or a name-tagged scrub set you cannot buy off a rack	Yes	No	Deduct, cost and cleaning
Plain scrubs in whatever color the unit likes, sold to anybody	Often no	Yes	At risk: the same garment is street clothing
Non-slip shoes, white coats, stethoscopes, badge reels	Usually yes	Shoes: arguable, a stethoscope: no	Mixed. Equipment that has no personal use wins; footwear that you also wear to the store does not

For a self-employed nurse, Schedule C is where this gets claimed, and the reason the test survives the move from employee to business is section 262: Publication 334 lists “Personal, living, and family expenses” among the nondeductible business costs. Clothing you could wear is clothing the IRS reads as yours.

Is Dry Cleaning Tax Deductible in 2026?

Laundry follows the clothes it cleans, with one route people miss.

• W-2 employee: no. Publication 5138 treats the upkeep of qualifying work clothes as part of the same package when the employer provides or reimburses it, but the cleaning you pay for yourself is an unreimbursed employee expense, which is the dead category.
• 1099 contractor at a normal worksite: yes, when the clothing itself passes the two-part test. The cleaning is part of the cost of keeping a required, non-everyday garment in service.
• 1099 contractor traveling away from home on business: and this is the route people miss. Publication 463’s Table 1-1, “Travel Expenses You Can Deduct”, has a row for cleaning, and the row says dry cleaning and laundry. On a 1099 assignment away from your tax home, the laundry you do in that city is a travel expense on Schedule C, alongside your other travel costs.

The other half of that publication matters for anyone using per diem instead of receipts: incidental expenses, the bucket a lodging per diem pays out of, expressly do not cover laundry. Publication 463: “Incidental expenses don’t include expenses for laundry, cleaning and pressing of clothing, lodging taxes, costs of telegrams or telephone calls.” A per diem does not silently include your dry cleaning, so if you are claiming the laundry as a real expense you have to substantiate the real expense.

Worked Example: One Cart of Scrubs, Three Nurses

$600 of scrubs and shoes, $200 of dry cleaning and laundry, 22 percent federal bracket. The only thing that changes is the form they file.

	W-2 staff nurse	1099 travel nurse	1099 with a W-2 job over $184,500
Spent on the kit	$800	$800	$800
Deduction allowed	$0	$800	$800
Self-employment tax avoided	$0	$113	$21
Federal income tax avoided	$0	$164	$174
What the kit really cost	$800	$523	$605

Read the last column before you read the middle one. A deduction is worth the tax it saves, not the amount it removes, so $800 of Schedule C clothing is worth $277, about 35 percent of the spend. And a 1099 nurse whose staff job has already taken Social Security tax out of $184,500 of wages only avoids the 2.9 percent Medicare part on top of income tax, which is why the same cart is worth $195 to her and $277 to the nurse with no staff job.

The Ask That Beats the Deduction: an Accountable Plan

An employee’s deduction is gone; an employer’s reimbursement was never a deduction at all, and it is still alive. Regulation 1.62-2 says amounts paid under an accountable plan are “excluded from the employee’s gross income, are not reported as wages or other compensation on the employee’s Form W-2, and are exempt from the withholding and payment of employment taxes”. Publication 5138 names the occupation group this reaches: “The value and upkeep of work clothes provided to firefighters, health care workers, law enforcement officers or letter carriers is nontaxable to the employee”, and “Reimbursements to employees for their purchase of any of these are excludable if the expenditures are substantiated under the accountable plan rules.”

Three requirements, and the third is where agencies get sloppy:

1. Business connection. The expense has to be one you incurred while working.
2. Substantiation. Amount, date, what it was and the business reason, handed to the payor. The regulation gives a safe harbor: an advance within 30 days, substantiation within 60 days and returning any excess within 120 days all count as within a reasonable period of time.
3. Return the excess. Anything paid over the substantiated cost comes back or becomes wages.

Why this is worth asking for, at the same 22 percent bracket the calculator uses:

How the agency funds your 800 of scrubs	What it costs the agency	What reaches your pocket
A reimbursement under an accountable plan, receipts attached	$800	$800
Extra wages big enough to leave you $800 after income tax and payroll tax	about $1,224	$800

The top row costs the agency its face amount and has no payroll tax on either side. The bottom row has to be grossed up to $1,137 before withholding, and then the agency’s own payroll tax lands on top. That is the argument to bring to a recruiter, and it is a better one than “can I have a raise” for the same amount of money.

Two warnings from the same page of Publication 5138. If the clothing does not qualify as a uniform, then “the clothing, or reimbursement for the clothing, must be treated as a taxable fringe benefit and is subject to income, social security and Medicare taxes”, so a logo requirement alone does not buy you a tax-free allowance. And a flat monthly clothing allowance that nobody substantiates is not an accountable plan; it is wages, reported in boxes 1, 3 and 5, with no offsetting deduction to claim because 67(h) killed it.

What to Keep If You Do Deduct This on Schedule C

Publication 529’s recordkeeping sentence is written for the deductions that survived: “You must keep records to verify your deductions. You should keep receipts, canceled checks, substitute checks, financial account statements, and other documentary evidence.” For clothing, add the two facts the test actually turns on, because they are the ones an examiner asks for:

• Why it is required. A dress-code page, a unit policy, an offer letter, an emailed requirement from the agency, or the hospital’s badge-and-attire rules.
• Why it is not everyday clothing. The logo, the facility-specific color, the fact that it is not sold for street use, or the fact that you cannot wear it on the unit in anything else.
• Which expenses belong to which assignment. Cleaning claimed as a travel expense has to sit in the city you were away from home in, on a trip that was not indefinite.

Deducting the cost and the cleaning of the same kit in the same year is fine. Deducting the same kit twice, or deducting it while also receiving a tax-free reimbursement for it, is the duplicate-expense mistake, and it is the reason the $184,500 question in the calculator matters: the 1099 side of your year is where these costs live, and the W-2 side is where your Social Security tax has already been paid.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can travel nurses write off scrubs?

Only the 1099 ones, and only if the scrubs are required for the job and are not suitable for everyday wear. A W-2 travel nurse deducts nothing, whether the scrubs cost $80 or $800.

Can I deduct my logo scrubs if my hospital requires them?

The requirement is half the test, not the answer. Publication 5138 says distinctive clothing is not enough and that what matters is whether the clothing is suitable for taking the place of regular clothing. A required, purchasable-by-anyone scrub top is a weaker claim than the logo makes it feel like.

Is the dry cleaning of my work clothes deductible?

It follows the garment. Non-qualifying clothing means nondeductible cleaning for an employee, and for a 1099 nurse it is deductible only alongside clothing that passes the test. There is one separate route, and it belongs to the 1099 side: Publication 463 lists dry cleaning and laundry as a deductible travel expense for someone traveling away from home on business.

My employer gives me a $50 monthly scrub allowance. Is that taxable?

If nobody asks you for receipts, assume it is wages. Publication 5138 is direct about non-qualifying clothing and allowances being a taxable fringe benefit subject to income, social security and Medicare tax. Ask the payroll office whether the allowance runs under an accountable plan; if it does, the money should not be showing up in box 1 of your W-2.

Can I deduct scrubs if I have both a W-2 nursing job and 1099 shifts?

You deduct them against the 1099 income, on Schedule C, never against the W-2 side. Answer the wage base question in the calculator, because whether your staff pay has already absorbed the $184,500 ceiling changes what the deduction is worth.

Do any of the Form 2106 exception categories get to deduct uniforms?

Not in the way people hope. Publication 529’s reservist example has the uniform purchase and its cleaning disallowed as a miscellaneous itemized deduction, while the reservist’s mileage is allowed. Qualified performing artists are the exception with clothing, and only for theatrical clothing not suitable for everyday wear.

Will this deduction come back?

There is no date for it to come back on. The window that used to end the disallowance was deleted in 2025, and the current statute reads “any taxable year beginning after December 31, 2017”. Treat the employee-side clothing deduction as permanently closed unless Congress passes a new law.

Does my state follow the same rule?

Some states start from federal taxable income and some decouple. This page and its calculator price federal tax only, so check the state you file a return in before you treat any number here as your total.

What else is still deductible for a 1099 nurse?

Mileage and licensing and association costs behave the same way as clothing on Schedule C, and the pages that price them are the 2026 mileage deduction calculator and the duplicate expenses checklist.

Sources

• IRS Publication 529, Miscellaneous Deductions (page reviewed 30 April 2026): That you can no longer claim any miscellaneous itemized deductions subject to the 2 percent-of-AGI limitation, including unreimbursed employee expenses; the five categories of employment still allowed to file Form 2106; the Debra Smith example where a reservist’s $250 of uniform purchase and cleaning is not deductible; the performing artist rule for theatrical clothing; and the recordkeeping sentence listing receipts, canceled checks, substitute checks and financial account statements.
• 26 U.S. Code section 67, current text and amendment notes: The operative sentence that no miscellaneous itemized deduction shall be allowed for any taxable year beginning after December 31, 2017, and the amendment note recording that P.L. 119-21, section 70110(a), substituted ‘beginning after 2017’ for ‘2018 through 2025’ and struck ‘and before January 1, 2026’ from the text.
• IRS Publication 5138, Employer’s Tax Guide to Fringe Benefits (February 2014): The two-part work clothing test, the sentences that distinctive clothing is not enough and that not wearing it away from work does not meet the test, the detective suit jacket example, the listing of firefighters, health care workers, law enforcement officers and letter carriers whose work clothes and upkeep are nontaxable, and the rule that non-qualifying clothing or reimbursement is a taxable fringe benefit subject to income, social security and Medicare tax.
• 26 CFR 1.62-2, Payments Made, or Incurred Expenses Paid by, Employers Under Travel, Entertainment, or Other Reimbursement Plans: That accountable plan payments are excluded from the employee’s gross income, are not reported as wages on Form W-2 and are exempt from withholding and employment taxes, and the 30-day, 60-day and 120-day safe harbors for a reasonable period of time.
• IRS Publication 463, Travel, Gift, and Car Expenses (reviewed 30 April 2026): Table 1-1, Travel Expenses You Can Deduct, whose cleaning row reads dry cleaning and laundry, and the sentence that incidental expenses do not include laundry, cleaning and pressing of clothing.
• IRS Publication 334, Tax Guide for Small Business (2025 edition): That the maximum net self-employment earnings subject to the social security part of the SE tax is $184,500 for 2026, the $176,100 figure for 2025, and that personal, living and family expenses are not deductible business expenses on Schedule C.

Next step: Pull up one page of your facility's dress code or your agency's uniform policy and save it. That document is the difference between a deduction and a personal purchase.