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For year 2017, I contributed to FSA through my employer while spouse contributed to HSA through her employer. How to correct this situation while filing 2017 tax return?

I read online to make HSA contributions as excess income on tax return which makes sense but I also read about the excise tax for HSA over contributions so wondering whether I should withdraw the amount from HSA account.

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12 Replies

For year 2017, I contributed to FSA through my employer while spouse contributed to HSA through her employer. How to correct this situation while filing 2017 tax return?

The following answer assumes that you have a health FSA and not a limited purpose FSA, such as for vision only or for dependent care coverage. If you have a limited FSA, please tell us in the comments what type it is.

First, was your spouse covered by your FSA? If so, as it looks like you know, she was not eligible to make contributions to her HSA.

When you go through the HSA interview (Federal->Deductions & Credits->Medical->HSA MSA Contributions), when you are asked about her HDHP coverage ("Was [name] covered by a High Deductible Health Plan (HDHP) in 2017?"), answer "No, I did not have coverage." (The HDHP coverage was negated by the FSA coverage).

This will cause all of her contributions in 2017 to be declared "excess". TurboTax will next ask if you want to withdraw the excess before the due date of the return (April 17th). If you have the money, answer "yes".

Contact your HSA administrator and tell them you want to withdraw an "excess contribution" made in 2017. They will send you a check for that amount from your HSA.

As soon as TurboTax detects the excess, it will add that amount to line 21 (Other Income) on your 1040. You don't have to do anything else.

If you cannot withdraw the entire amount from the HSA (because you don't have enough funds), withdraw as much as you can; the rest will carry over to 2018 and be assessed a 6% penalty. This 6% penalty will carry over until your spouse is no longer covered by your FSA (i.e., she can start to contribute to her HSA again) and the excess is charged off against a future annual contribution limit, or until she takes a distribution for non-medical expenses which will cost her not only income tax on the distribution but also a 20% penalty unless she is 65 or older.

My recollection is that a health FSA automatically covers the spouse, so you need to have a sit-down with your benefits co-ordinator and her benefits co-ordinator and decide which plan you are going to go with.

For year 2017, I contributed to FSA through my employer while spouse contributed to HSA through her employer. How to correct this situation while filing 2017 tax return?

Thanks for the response.

Myself and my spouse has individual health coverage from our respective employers in year 2017. Spouse did contributions to both HSA and Limited FSA and I made contributions to general FSA (not limited). Spouse is not covered by my FSA and never reimbursed anything from my FSA but that doesn't matter I believe.

For year 2017, I contributed to FSA through my employer while spouse contributed to HSA through her employer. How to correct this situation while filing 2017 tax return?

Also, my FSA started on 12/01/2017 while my spouse did HSA contribution all along the year so just wanted to see if it makes things any easier.

For year 2017, I contributed to FSA through my employer while spouse contributed to HSA through her employer. How to correct this situation while filing 2017 tax return?

So, if I understand you correctly, your wife medical expenses could not be reimbursed from your FSA until December? In that case, she was eligible for the HSA until December.

NOTE, eligibility is determined by the coverage on the first day of the month. If your FSA became active on December 2, then your spouse was still under the HDHP for December as well.

This means that when your spouse indicates here HDHP coverage, instead of saying "no, I did not have coverage", you would say "I had different types of coverage at different times of the year." The next screen will ask you for the coverage month by month. Put Family for any month in which she did not have access to FSA funds (she was the one with the Family HDHP coverage, right?), and "none" for any month in which she could have been reimbursed by your FSA, always looking at the first of the month. This should make for quite a difference.

For year 2017, I contributed to FSA through my employer while spouse contributed to HSA through her employer. How to correct this situation while filing 2017 tax return?

Thanks for all the replies. I spoke to my previous plan administrator and got more information. Here's a detailed breakdown of the coverage me and my spouse had.

Year: 2016
Myself: Changed employer in Nov and put $200 in FSA account starting from 11/06/2016. Plan year ends 12/31/2016.

Year: 2017
Spouse: Had HSA account with HDHP since 01/01/2017 and contributing to it every month.
Myself: Didn't enroll for 2017 FSA but plan has 2.5 month extension period ending on 03/15/2017. I changed job again in Dec 2017 and had $200 in new FSA account starting from 12/01/2017.

I want to confirm whether I can treat the HSA contribution of my spouse for month of December ONLY as excess contribution and leave other month contributions as-is since I never had the FSA coverage except for December.

Thanks in advance for your time!

For year 2017, I contributed to FSA through my employer while spouse contributed to HSA through her employer. How to correct this situation while filing 2017 tax return?

What was the amount of money in your FSA on 12/31/2016? If the 2.5 month grace period referred to your 2016 FSA plan, then you could have paid her medical expenses from it in early 2017, which would have precluded her HSA eligibility for the first three months.

However, the IRS notes that if the amount in the FSA was zero on the last day of the plan year (12/31/2016), then she gets a pass and all three months are in. See page 4 in IRS Publication 969 (<a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p969.pdf">https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p969.pdf</a>).

So, she has either 11 months or 8 months of eligibility to contribute...

For year 2017, I contributed to FSA through my employer while spouse contributed to HSA through her employer. How to correct this situation while filing 2017 tax return?

I had $200 in my FSA on 12/31/2016 which makes my spouse ineligible for first three months then.

For year 2017, I contributed to FSA through my employer while spouse contributed to HSA through her employer. How to correct this situation while filing 2017 tax return?

Yes, sorry.

For year 2017, I contributed to FSA through my employer while spouse contributed to HSA through her employer. How to correct this situation while filing 2017 tax return?

Thanks for all replies. I read i8889 pdf from IRS website and have one more question.

My spouse made total HSA contributions of $1650 for year 2017 (includes both employer matching and payroll deductions) but she was ineligible for months Jan, Feb, Mar and Dec 2017 because I had general FSA.

Making the calculations according to i8889 (<a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i8889.pdf">https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i8889.pdf</a>), spouse's maximum contribution limit $3400 multiplied by 8 months and dividing by 12 months gives $2266 which is still greater than the contribution of $1650 she made so wondering whether there are any excess contributions here and whether she needs to withdraw any amount before tax deadline for year 2017.

For year 2017, I contributed to FSA through my employer while spouse contributed to HSA through her employer. How to correct this situation while filing 2017 tax return?

Thanks for all replies. I read i8889 pdf from IRS website and have one more question.

My spouse made total HSA contributions of $1650 for year 2017 (includes both employer matching and payroll deductions) but she was ineligible for months Jan, Feb, Mar and Dec 2017 because I had general FSA.

Making the calculations according to i8889 (<a rel="nofollow" target="_blank" href="https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i8889.pdf">https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/i8889.pdf</a>), spouse's maximum contribution limit $3400 multiplied by 8 months and dividing by 12 months gives $2266 which is still greater than the contribution of $1650 she made so wondering whether there are any excess contributions here and whether she needs to withdraw any amount before tax deadline for year 2017.

For year 2017, I contributed to FSA through my employer while spouse contributed to HSA through her employer. How to correct this situation while filing 2017 tax return?

Looks like no excess to me, and the form 8889 should reflect that.

For year 2017, I contributed to FSA through my employer while spouse contributed to HSA through her employer. How to correct this situation while filing 2017 tax return?

Cool, thanks for the response!

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