If you live in a state that requires payment of income taxes, you may be eligible to claim a deduction of these state taxes on your federal return. You must be able to itemize your deductions in order to claim state income taxes.
To be eligible to itemize deductions, the sum of all your deductible expenses must be greater than the standard deduction allotted to your filing status. That means a single taxpayer with a standard deduction of $6,350 must have deductible expenses over $6,350 in order to itemize expenses, and claim state income tax deduction. The eligibility requirements allow you to combine your entire amount of deductible expenses into one sum to meet the itemized deduction.