@dmertz wrote:
"Your wife can't contribute using your payroll deductions under your employer sponsored plan."
I don't think that that is true. If the employer deposits the payroll deduction to the wife's HSA, its treated as a the wife's contribution. TurboTax allows one to specify if the amount reported with code W in box 12 of the W-2 is a contribution to the employee's HSA or a contribution to the HSA of the employee's spouse.
I'm not sure how that would work with the fringe benefit rules in pub 15 and section 125. An HSA contribution is a salary deferral. The employee agrees to a salary reduction and the employer contributes that amount on the employee's behalf. In other words, it is employer money going into the HSA, not employee money. That's also why the contributions are excluded from social security and medicare tax -- the employee's salary is reduced. I don't see how the employer can give free money to a spouse without it being considered either a payment to the spouse (subject to a 1099), or being an ineligible salary deferral, meaning it would be fully taxable to the employee.
In other words, if the employer puts money in the spouse's HSA, it does not count as pre-tax contributions for the employee. It would be fully taxable to the employee, and the spouse would have to take the deduction on form 8889 just as if they had taken money from the spouse's paycheck after it was deposited in their bank account.
I could be wrong, but I can't see a legal way for the employee's deferred salary to be deposited to a spouse unless it was taxable income to the spouse.
