W2 Corretion Request due to HSA Excess Contribution

[bhsong206]

This year, I turned 65, and starting in February, both my wife and I enrolled in Medicare Parts A and B. In the previous year, I was covered under my employer’s health insurance and contributed $9,300 to my HSA. I had initially believed that my wife’s Medicare coverage, which had a delayed enrollment, would begin on February 1. However, it was retroactively applied six months back, which meant we were only eligible to contribute around $6,300 to the HSA—not the full $9,300.

Upon realizing this, I requested a $3,000 excess contribution refund from our HSA provider in March and received the refund on April 12.

However, after filing my taxes in early April using TurboTax, I printed out a copy this week and noticed that my HSA contributions are listed as $0. It seems I may need to file an amended return.

Question 1:
Since the original W-2 issued by my employer shows $9,300 in Box 12, code W, do I need to ask my employer to issue a corrected W-2 (Form W-2c) reflecting the updated contribution amount?

[dmertz]

If you maintained family HDHP coverage and you yourself were not covered by Medicare or any other disqualifying coverage, your eligibility to contribute the full $9,300 to your HSA was unaffected.  Given that you were unaware of the lookback period for your wife's Medicare coverage, it seems likely that you would not have changed to self-only coverage and you were eligible for the full $9,300 contribution.

Only actual excess HSA contributions are eligible to be returned, and it seems that you made no excess contribution.  A distribution of a purported excess contribution that is actually not an excess contribution constitutes an ordinary distribution no matter how it is reported on the Form 1099-SA.  You would need to enter the Form 1099-SA as having code 1 in box 3 and $0 in box 2.  (You might have to explain this to the IRS.)  As an ordinary distribution, you can apply the distribution to qualified medical expenses paid in  2024 to reduce the taxable amount of the distribution.

Your W-2 is correct.  No correction to your W-2 is needed.  Even if there had been an excess contribution to your HSA, no change to the W-2 is to be made.  The excess contribution would simply be added to your 2024 income on Schedule 1 line 8z after indicating to TurboTax that you did not have family HDHP coverage for the later months of 2024.  The earnings distributed with the returned contribution would also appear on line 8z.

You do not get a deduction for HSA contributions made through your employer because your employer has already excluded this amount from your earnings.  You should see $9,300 on line 9 of your Form 8889 because you had family HDHP coverage for all of 2024 and you yourself had no disqualifying coverage in 2024.