The 20% refund on qualifying non-routine medical expenses.
Total refund
—
On medical (20%)
—
On nursing home (40%)
—
Your breakdown
Updates live as you type| Cost | Relief rate | Refund |
|---|
Two different rates hide inside one Med 1 claim
Most people assume medical relief is a single thing. It is not. Revenue gives relief on qualifying health expenses at the standard 20 percent rate, full stop, no matter how much income tax you pay. So €1,000 of GP visits, prescriptions, consultant fees and the like returns €200 to you. Nursing home fees are the one big exception. Because they can be ruinously expensive, Revenue allows relief on them at your marginal rate, meaning a 40 percent taxpayer gets 40 percent back. That split is the single most valuable thing to understand on a Med 1, and it is why this tool keeps the two figures in separate boxes rather than lumping them together.
Walking a €2,500 medical and €15,000 nursing home claim through
Consider a year where a family pays €2,500 in qualifying medical costs for various members and €15,000 towards a parent’s nursing home care, with the higher 40 percent rate applying to the person making the claim. The two reliefs are calculated independently and then added.
The chart makes the point visually: the nursing home portion dwarfs the standard medical relief, purely because the rate is double.
The receipts people forget they can claim
The list of qualifying expenses is wider than most realise. It covers doctor and consultant fees, prescribed medicines, physiotherapy, certain dental work such as crowns and orthodontics, IVF and other fertility treatment, costs of a child with a serious life-threatening illness, and even non-routine eye treatment. It excludes routine dental check-ups and routine eye tests, cosmetic work, and anything you were reimbursed for by private health insurance or a state scheme. A frequently missed one is the cost of a registered nurse caring for someone at home. Revenue also allows travel costs at a set rate per kilometre in specific cases, such as journeys for kidney dialysis, rather than for general hospital visits. Keep every receipt, because you claim on the amount you actually paid out of pocket.
Four years to look back
You do not have to claim in the same tax year. Revenue lets you go back four years, so in 2025 you can still claim qualifying expenses from 2021 onward. That is genuinely useful money sitting on the table for households that never got around to filing a Med 1. The mechanism is simple: log into myAccount, complete the health expenses section of your annual return, and upload or retain the receipts in case of a Revenue check. One caveat this tool builds in: it assumes the 40 percent rate applies to nursing home relief. If the person claiming only pays tax at 20 percent, the nursing home refund is also 20 percent, so halve that figure. You also cannot get back more than the tax you actually paid in the year.
Can I claim medical expenses I paid for a family member?
Yes. You can claim relief on qualifying expenses you paid for anyone, not just yourself or a dependant. What matters is that you bore the cost. So paying a parent’s consultant bill or a sibling’s physiotherapy qualifies, as long as it was not reimbursed by insurance.
Does private health insurance reduce my claim?
Only to the extent it reimbursed you. If your insurer paid €600 of an €800 bill, you claim relief on the €200 you actually paid. Premiums themselves are handled separately through tax relief at source on the policy and are not part of a Med 1 claim.