Checklist of allowable medical expenses

• Fees for professional medical services: These include the services of doctors, dentists, surgeons, chiropractors, acupuncturists, registered or practical nurses, physiotherapists, speech therapists, naturopathists, professional tutors that a medical practitioner certifies as necessary because of a person's learning disability or mental impairment, and so on.

• Payments for apparatus and materials, and repairs thereto: Eligible apparatus and materials might include artificial limbs, wheelchairs, crutches, hearing aids, prescription eyeglasses or contact lenses, dentures, pacemakers, iron lungs, orthopedic shoes, reasonable expenses relating to renovations or alterations to a dwelling of an impaired person, reasonable moving expenses if incurred by an impaired person moving to a more accessible dwelling, and so on.

• Medicines: These might include costs of prescriptions, insulin or substitutes, oxygen, and so on.

• Fees for medical treatments: These treatments might include blood transfusions, injections, pre- and post-natal treatments, psychotherapy, speech pathology or audiology, and so on.

• Fees for laboratory examinations and tests: These include blood tests, cardiographs, X-ray examinations, urine and stool analyses, and so on.

• Fees for hospital services: These include hospital bills, use of the operating room, anesthetist, X-ray technician, and so on.

• Amounts paid for attendant care, or care in an establishment

• Ambulance charges

• Expenses for guide and hearing-ear animals

• Premiums paid to private health services plans (other than those paid by an employer) and premiums paid under the Quebec Medical Insurance Plan, including travel medical insurance.

• Group home: If you paid fees to a group home in Canada for individuals who qualify for the disability amount (line 316), the portion of those fees paid to someone to care for or supervise such an individual, if nobody has claimed it as an attendant or institutional care medical expense on line 330, a child care expense on line 214, or an attendant care expense on line 215 for that person.

• Travel expenses, if medical treatment is not available locally

Currently, individuals who have a severe or prolonged mobility impairment may be eligible to claim as medical expenses the renovation costs incurred to make their homes more accessible. The list of eligible medical expenses is now extended to include expenses relating to the construction of a principal residence if the expenses enable the individual to gain access to or be mobile or functional within the home.

Items you cannot claim as medical expenses

Things you cannot claim as medical expenses include the following: toothpaste, maternity clothes, athletic club memberships, funeral, cremation or burial expenses, illegal operations, treatments or illegally procured drugs, and so on. In addition, you cannot claim the part of an expense for which you have been or can be reimbursed. However, you can claim all of the expense if the reimbursement is included in your income — such as a benefit shown on a T4 slip — and you did not deduct the reimbursement anywhere else on your return.