HRA plan tax on reimbursement
originally posted: 11/22/2006 reposted: 2/18/2011 This post has not been recently reviewed or revised by the author and may be out of date. If you notice an error or are in doubt, please send a new question by email or ask for an update. Email asktony@tonynovak.com.
Q: If an HRA plan had mistakenly over-reimbursed an employee, is that amount reportable as income to the employee's W-2? And does the plan document have to have some language to disclose that so employees may know that if they get amount in excess of what is qualified medical expenses reimbursement, the excess amount is subject to income tax ?
A: Any money paid to an employee that is not otherwise accounted for as another type of expense is presumed to be wages and subject to wage taxes. On the other hand, an errant over-remimbursement that is timely returned to the employer would not be wages. There are no specific requirements for an HRA plan document contents but most plan documents (or more likely the Summary Plan Description that is distributed to employees) would contain this explanation. The small business HRA plans from Freedom Benefits contain a section explaining these tax consequences and how to get additional help if necessary. IRS uses tough and scary language to describe the adverse tax effects (including penalties for underpayment of wage tax withholding) for failing to timely account for HRA plan disbursements. The Treasury Department is primarily concerned with the large scale use of employer-provided health debit cards by employees without proper documentation as to how the funds are spent. This is not the issue you are posing, so a simple correction should be sufficient.
Summary
More resources:
Freedom Benefits Small Business Health Reimbursement Accounts