Re: New taxes for families with kids born with special needs coming in 6 months

[Guest guest]

As much as I HATE this new health care plan. I have to say I have always had a $2500 Federal Cap on our FSA. ( for the last 6 yrs at least). Would love to know if other do not have caps? or have higher caps and why is mine already at this mark? Currently, while I can use our FSA for Sams Suresteps, they would never let me get away with using it for anything other than medical equipment! There is no way they would let me pay for educational services like tuition. Physical therapy, maybe. I never tried.

Not saying its not true, just weird cause there has always been a cap for us. It stinks as I have 3 people who need glasses, two who need special equip for feet issues, and thats $800 right there. God help me when our next kiddo needs braces.

The non presrip meds are going to hurt us though. All 7 of us use Zyrtec and such. I do wish the government would quit telling me how much and what I can do with my money.

 

Full article here: 

http://www.atr.org/files/files/070110pr-jan2011taxes.pdf

The part that addresses kids w/special needs below:

There are over twenty new

or higher taxes in the government health plan.  Several will first

go into effect on January 1, 2011.  They include:

The “Medicine Cabinet Tax”  Americans will no longer

be able to use health savings account (HSA), flexible spending account

(FSA), or health reimbursement (HRA) pre-tax dollars to purchase

non-prescription, over-the-counter medicines.

The “Special Needs Kids Tax”  This provision of the

government health plan imposes a cap on flexible spending accounts

(FSAs) of $2500 (Currently, there is no federal government limit). 

There is one group of FSA owners for whom this new cap will be

particularly onerous: parents of special needs children.  There are

thousands of families with special needs children in the United States,

and many of them use FSAs to pay for special needs education.  Tuition

rates at one leading school that teaches special needs children in

Washington, D.C. (National

Child Research Center) can easily exceed $14,000 per year.  Under

tax rules, FSA dollars will be capped to pay for this type of special

needs education.  

The HSA Withdrawal Tax Hike.  This provision of the

government health plan increases the additional tax on non-medical

early withdrawals from an HSA from 10 to 20 percent, disadvantaging

them relative to IRAs and other tax-advantaged accounts, which remain

at 10 percent.

Read more: http://www.atr.org/sixmonths.html?content=5171#ixzz0sZbbsKlR