HSA Income

[carlgerlach]

I file jointly with my husband but have no job.  We both have access to and share his company sponsored HSA account under his family plan company health insurance.   I have never lapsed on my health care.  I have had it continuously through all of 2020.  Why is turbo tax making me respond to a question asking WHY my health insurance lapse on 12/01/2020?  I have no option to answer other than to say I did have my health care coverage lapsed.  But it never did??  Where is turbo tax getting this information from and how do I correct it???

Thank you so very much!

[RaifH]

This is strange wording by TurboTax due to strange laws by the IRS. HSAs can only be owned by an individual. That individual may have a high deductible health plan that covers their entire family and may use their HSA to pay for medical expenses incurred by members of their family, but the HSA belongs to only the individual. 

On TurboTax, if you are covered by your spouse's HDHP and do not have an HSA in your name, you do not need to select the box under your name for an HSA account. If you did have your own HSA, you would select that you were covered by your spouse's HDHP coverage if they had family coverage for every month that they had it. If they had self-only coverage, then you would not be eligible to contribute to your HSA. 

If you select that you had an HSA but did not select that you were covered by your spouse's HDHP coverage, it will ask you about health insurance lapses. This is due to rules that you could use to maximize your contributions in prior years, but to be eligible, you had to maintain coverage every month of this year. If you had no HSA and made no contributions to it, you can ignore this. 

[ckgerlach]

Thank you so very much for your response.  It was very complete and helps me to understand the basis of these questions in turbo tax.  Again thank you for your time in answering.  You’ve been very helpful!