With the first few weeks of summer already officially behind us, many families are settling into new routines, enjoying the perks of summer vacations carefully planned around work schedules and other commitments.
Luckily, there’s some financial relief available on childcare costs this summer through Dependent Daycare Flexible Spending Accounts (FSAs). This kind of pre-tax advantage gives you an average of 30% savings on eligible dependent daycare expenses. If your child/dependent is under age 13, you can use this account to pay for summer day camps and nursery schools, among other qualifying expenses.
Participants in the Dependent Daycare FSA need to enroll in the account during their employer’s Open Enrollment period (check with your HR department to see when yours may be), unless they experience an event that allows them to enroll mid-plan year, like a change in work schedule or moving.
If you are enrolled in a Dependent Daycare FSA, make sure you use your account by the end of the plan year. An IRS rule known as Use or Lose does not allow funds to rollover from year to year, so be diligent in spending all your funds.
For more information about the Dependent Daycare FSA, click here.
The next Patient Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) filing deadline is July 31, 2017 for all Health Reimbursement Arrangements (HRAs), Medical Expense Reimbursement Plans (MERPs) and self-funded medical plans with a plan year ending in 2016. Click 
Here’s how the plan works. Your employees estimate how much they spend a month on work-related parking and transit expenses and elect to have that amount withheld pre-tax. So, say an employee sets aside $100 for transit expenses and $50 for parking expenses every month. Your company runs payroll twice a month; therefore, the employee has $75 withheld pre-tax every paycheck. That money is put into a P&A commuter account which the employee can access to pay for monthly parking and transit expenses.&A offers a debit card with the commuter account. Per IRS guidelines, all transit passes (bus, subway, train, etc.) must be purchased with a terminally restricted debit card and are no longer eligible for reimbursement any other way. P&A’s debit card technology meets this requirement, allowing transit passes to be purchased only at authorized transit authority terminals. This ensures that the money the employee sets aside is only used for transit expenses.
April 3 is recognized as National Employee Benefits Day (NEBD) by the International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans, a nonprofit organization which provides research and education to the benefits community.
In honor of NEBD, we want to recognize our colleagues, administrators, clients and brokers who play an important role in this industry daily, providing services to people across the country. To all benefit professionals, your role is vital to the employee benefits community. Your service is an important contribution and we thank you for your partnership and commitment to helping others.
