Hello, thank you for your response. So this question is asked of me at the end of inputting in my W2. It asks me if my employer provided child care services, and then asks me
Did [I] have a Flexible Spending Account to pay for child or dependent care?
If I add the $647 value in here it changes my tax due/tax refund by about $200 to my benefit, so it looks like it is affecting me different depending on how I answer.
In the help file "How do I know if I had leftover money in my Flexible Spending Account?" it says
"We’re asking for the amount of money you either forfeited because you didn’t use it by the end of the plan year, or the amount your employer is going to allow you to carry over into next year’s FSA (uncommon)." If the coverage period is Jan 1 2020 to 15 Mar 2021, I don't think this is considered "forfeited" as I can still use it, but is it considered an amount that my employer is allowing me to "carry over"? I'm "carrying over" funds from one calendar year to the other, but it's not moving funds from the 2020 Plan to the 2021 Plan. I'm just allowed to spend the 2020 funds until March 15 of 2021.
Going back to the actual TurboTax question, it states
"If you had any money left in your account at the end of the year, enter the amount here."
I had money left in my account; but what "end of the year" does it mean - end of the calendar year (1/1/20-12/31/20), or end of the coverage period (1/1/20-3/15/21)? I think the problem here is that there's the unusual situation of COVID-19 leading to changes in the FSA program (FSAFEDS) and the coverage dates that they're allowing.
