Health Insurance

[Delilahjane85]

MY company provides health insurance; however, we are a small business and there was no cafeteria plan setup to offer health insurance pre-taxed for the employee.  My part of the insurance is taxable and I don't know how that will affect my taxes.  Any help will be appreciated.   I know the amount reported in box DD is both my contribution and the employers contribution. 

[BillM223 · Accepted solution]

I need to make sure that I understand the situation.

You say that you have a code DD in box 12 on your W-2, right? And that this amount includes both what your employer paid towards your health insurance premiums AND what you paid by means of payroll deduction, right?

It would be normal for an employer to remove the code DD amount from Wages in boxes 1, 3, and 5 on your W-2 before printing. Note that since this is done to all three boxes for Wages, there is no way to know if the employer did or not unless you ask them.

If the employer removed the code DD amount from Wages in boxes 1, 3, and 5, then there is nothing more to do in terms of your health insurance premiums - they have been accounted for by removing them from your income.

If, however, your employer did NOT remove the code DD amount then any amount of health insurance premiums (whether from your employer or from you) that were not removed from Wages in boxes 1, 3, and 5 are deductible on Schedule A in the Medical Expenses section. Of course, you may deduct only medical expenses when they are greater than 7.5% of your Adjusted Gross Income and when your Itemized Deductions are greater than your Standard Deduction. Therefore, most taxpayers won't see any effect on the federal return.

However, because the Standard Deduction is different in some states than on the federal return, we encourage you to enter the Medical Expenses (if they weren't removed from Wages already) in any case, because the states get the values from the federal entries, and the deductions may be applicable to the state.

[Delilahjane85]

No they were not removed from my wages.   So does this make a difference?

[dmertz · Accepted solution]

Even though the employer is required to report in box 12 with code DD the cost of the employer-sponsored health insurance, since this is not a cafeteria plan the employer should not have excluded either the amount you paid or the amount they paid from the totals in boxes 1, 3 and 5.  You should verify with your employer or against your wage statements [Edit: apparently you already did this] that this is indeed the case to confirm that you should be claiming the entire amount as a medical-expense deduction on Schedule A (assuming that your itemized deductions exceed the standard deduction).  (If the employer had mistakenly excluded the amount from boxes 1, 3 and 5, they should really correct the W-2.)

[Delilahjane85]

Thanks for the help!!

[ytisra]

I would like to know how to file my insurance premium, if it has 14a, 14b, 14I with the different amount. in them. I'm I to all of them and add them up, are I'm I to choose one of them. Please help with information. Thanks

[BillM223]

What does 14a, 14b, and 14l refer to?

Remember that we on the Community cannot see your tax return nor the screen you are on.