Can I get disability for sarcoidosis?

How do I get "certified" as having a disability?

• I'm better now, but I feel that I was disabled before and want to re-file my taxes. Do I need to prove this, and how does that work? What does it take to prove disability, especially retroactively? In 2008 I was diagnosed with moderate to severe depression and began treatment. In 2011, I basically had a nervous breakdown and lost my high stress job in the tech industry. At that point I crawled into a hole and watched the world go by. I depleted my savings and began spending down my IRA, paying severe early withdrawal penalties each year. I probably should have claimed disability to avoid paying those penalties, but I barely had my shit together enough to file, much less figure out how a disability claim worked. Well, I think I've pulled my shit back together again, and I'm searching for a job. The IRA is mostly gone. Now I'd like to go back and re-file my taxes, and claim disability for those years while I was spending down my IRA, to try and recover those early withdrawal penalties. I would also like to find out if there are any disability programs that would let me collect something like unemployment while I'm searching for a job. I haven't worked in 3 years, so normal unemployment is not available to me. How does one go about getting "certified" for a disability? Is this something I just arbitrarily claim when I re-file my taxes, and wait for the government to challenge? What do I do when they do challenge? And are there "disability" programs that would let me file for some type of unemployment coverage while I search for work? (I live in Washington State, if anybody has local knowledge).

• Answer:

  Do you have documentation of your medical expenses for the years in which you want to re-file and recoup the early withdrawal penalties? If you don't, then I don't think that you have much recourse. If you do: When you filed your taxes, did you use the standard deduction or were you itemizing? If you itemized, you can deduct un-reimbursed medication expenses in excess of 10% of your gross income as of 2013, 7.5% of your gross income in previous years. You'll want to look at the instructions for Form 1040, Schedule A for specifics. If you used the standard deduction, there's not really a way for you to claim medical expenses, and there's no other applicable deduction that would change based on your dis/ability, in which case there's no reason to refile. Now I'd like to go back and re-file my taxes, and claim disability for those years while I was spending down my IRA, to try and recover those early withdrawal penalties. Similar to the tax deduction, you can withdraw to pay for medical expenses in excess of 10% of your gross income penalty-free. You can also get a penalty-free early withdrawal if you are so ill that it can be expected to result in death or permanent disability. If you think that your doctor(s) would provide documentation to support your claim that that applies to you, then you should speak to her about it. However, based on what you've said here, I don't think that it does apply. I would also like to find out if there are any disability programs that would let me collect something like unemployment while I'm searching for a job. Not that I know of. If you're a childless adult, then you're almost certainly ineligible for cash aid, but you may be able to get means-tested (meaning, you have an income and/or asset amount below a certain limit) vouchers for things like food (through SNAP) and possibly rent (Section 8), and though open-enrollment has passed, you may be able to still get on Medicaid (do you have insurance now?). The easiest to get is probably Medicaid, SNAP is more difficult, and rent vouchers are likely the most difficult. The long and short of it is, there's a fundamental problem with your idea of using disability payments as ad hoc unemployment benefits: arguing on the one hand that you're so disabled that you need public support is going to seem to contradict your argument that, on the other hand, you're currently employable and actively searching for employment. Many disabled people *do* work, but the point of public disability programs is to support people who can't work or who are extremely disadvantaged on the labor market because of their disability/ies. Also, the idea of public welfare programs generally in the US is to support people at the absolute minimum level of subsistence, which means giving people only enough assistance so that they aren't so poor that they literally die. It sounds like you're imagining that there are support programs for disabled people that go beyond that, but there really aren't, because the public welfare philosophy in the US is built around making sure people are above an absolute (and very low) measure of poverty and leaving the rest up to private enterprise (and assistance through the tax system, but it sounds like you're already tapping that vein). In pragmatic terms, I would advise to be thinking more in terms of means-tested programs rather than disability if you're close to running out of money.