Flex $ and Covid

[mrsGreeko]

I asked my company to allow me to stop deductions for my daycare account and they approved it and stopped as of last week. I would have lost most of the money otherwise because we only needed care for the first half of this year. If your care is closed you can ask to have it changed or stopped. Some people can go directly through their plan and others (like me) need to go to HR to get the approval so then plan advisor can do it.

[badgergrl]

Mar 29, 2020 9:33:26 GMT -5 mrsGreeko said:

I asked my company to allow me to stop deductions for my daycare account and they approved it and stopped as of last week. I would have lost most of the money otherwise because we only needed care for the first half of this year. If your care is closed you can ask to have it changed or stopped. Some people can go directly through their plan and others (like me) need to go to HR to get the approval so then plan advisor can do it.

Do you know how this qualifies as a change in circumstance to stop it? We are going to lose money if nothing goes over the summer (flex is for summer care only).

[lucky3]

I had the same question and called the benefits department last week. They said this counts as a qualifying event and you can change the contributions

[mrsGreeko]

Mar 29, 2020 20:39:25 GMT -5 badgergrl said:

Mar 29, 2020 9:33:26 GMT -5 mrsGreeko said:

I asked my company to allow me to stop deductions for my daycare account and they approved it and stopped as of last week. I would have lost most of the money otherwise because we only needed care for the first half of this year. If your care is closed you can ask to have it changed or stopped. Some people can go directly through their plan and others (like me) need to go to HR to get the approval so then plan advisor can do it.

Do you know how this qualifies as a change in circumstance to stop it? We are going to lose money if nothing goes over the summer (flex is for summer care only).

They said it wasn’t a qualifying event, which is why I had to get permission from my HR people. But then HR said it was a qualifying event because it was a change in child care or something. Either way I’d start with your plan advisor and see if you can do it that way and they will tell you if you need to go through HR. The whole thing took me like 20 minutes to talk to the advisor and shoot off a quick email to HR who then had it taken care of about 3 hours later without me having to call back the plan people.

[spidervain]

According to my HR/flex company the pandemic causing school closures is a qualifying event (change in coverage/costs), so I was able to change my election.

[ssmjlm]

I posted a similar question on MMM last week and we ultimately decided to cancel all contributions for the remainder of the year. My program had about 12 QLE options, one of which was loss of care basically.

I've already put in more than I've spent with just 1 first grader, so I had about $3k floating between before/after care and summer.

I'm not personally counting on even having summer care at this point. Or if they do, reducing the ratios like they did for daycares and then I just hope that I registered early enough to make the cut off.

[marie]

My kids do not do daycare or after school care, but I do fund it for summer camps. I wonder what will happen to the funds I already contributed and cannot use? I just do not see summer camps happening :-(

[scsarah]

Like marie, I only fund for summer camps. I reached out to my HR today, and they said that once I have proof of cancellation, I can stop contributions. They didn't yet answer my question about receiving back the contributions I've already made in.

[dr.girlfriend]

Thanks, I called today. They said they haven't received guidance from my company yet but will "research it" and let me know.

[whitemerlot]

I work for the school district and our program for before and after care is closed. I contacted HR and they are able to stop my contributions for the remainder of the plan year due to the "significant change in program costs", which is June 30. I am in the hole for reimbursing myself because it's a per paycheck deduction, but am glad I'm not going to lose $1200 that I would have had taken out for the rest of the year.

[marie]

I called yesterday and was on the phone for an hour! Seems like this is not coming up yet in my company because they did not know how to handle it. I am surprised by that, as we have 200K+ employees. They kept saying that they could only update it with a qualifying life event, and I asked if a pandemic might count? Supervisors were called and I was on hold for a long time, but they ended up letting me update my contributions.

For those of you that were turned down, I would suggest calling again in the coming days as things progress.

[Cappy]

I'm guessing it's just one of the minor things that hasn't fully been considered by HR & payroll communities given all they have on they have on their plates. But I'm glad to hear some of you are getting positive answers.

Since I posted our daycare paused our charges so I guess I need to run some numbers to see how it comes out for us.

[dr.girlfriend]

Mar 30, 2020 21:45:07 GMT -5 dr.girlfriend said:

Thanks, I called today. They said they haven't received guidance from my company yet but will "research it" and let me know.

Update:  They called back and said my company hasn't provided official guidance yet but they were able to stop it.  Thanks for starting this thread, I can't imagine how long it would have taken for me to think about stopping this on my own!

[Cappy]

I contacted my Payroll office and I was the first to ask. They let me go into the portal to indicate a qualifying event and change my elections. Our daycare expenses are around $1800/month so I didn't need to adjust too much but it's nice to know I won't lose money if things continue like this.

[jaylea]

My HR said there has been no guidance and would not let me make any changes.

😕

[Cappy]

Apr 7, 2020 14:11:20 GMT -5 jaylea said:

My HR said there has been no guidance and would not let me make any changes.

😕

I'm sorry! Maybe if a few other people ask they will reconsider. 

[scsarah]

Apr 7, 2020 14:11:20 GMT -5 jaylea said:

My HR said there has been no guidance and would not let me make any changes.

😕

That was the first answer I got, but then I told them I had friends nationwide who were able to do this (thanks to all of you!). I didn't hear anything for a few days, and then out of nowhere, I got a notice that my contributions had been stopped. Then on Monday they sent out a big email across the company that people could now do it on their own.

So, keep pushing, nicely if you can.

[badgergrl]

Apr 7, 2020 14:11:20 GMT -5 jaylea said:

My HR said there has been no guidance and would not let me make any changes.

😕

This where I am currently at too. I am employed by state government so not a small company. They said they hadn’t even considered it.

[huskymom]

I stopped all contributions but have $750 sitting in the account...if all camps are canceling not sure what we will do.

[Mimi]

badgergrl, marie, scsarah, I also only use my dependent care FSA for summer camps. I found out from my HR that I didn't need to enroll for dependent care FSA until the 1st day of camp. HR says it's an approved life event and suggested that in the future, I should only enroll on the 1st day of camp and not during enrollment period.

I was approved to stop my DCFSA contribution and was told I can start it again if summer camps happen. At this time, the funds that I've already contributed to the DCFSA are use it or lose it. We'll see if that will change.

[ssmjlm]

jaylea, badgergrl, I don't see how loss of care is not a QLE and I would push back. You literally are paying money into a pre-tax account that you cannot lose. I'm sure that's not really legal since at this point there is no timeline for anything reopening.

[Poppy]

My small company of 10 let us know we could change our contributions. I'm pretty surprised at these big companies that haven't gotten it together.

[scsarah]

Apr 15, 2020 7:09:25 GMT -5 Mimi said:

badgergrl , marie , scsarah , I also only use my dependent care FSA for summer camps. I found out from my HR that I didn't need to enroll for dependent care FSA until the 1st day of camp. HR says it's an approved life event and suggested that in the future, I should only enroll on the 1st day of camp and not during enrollment period.

I was approved to stop my DCFSA contribution and was told I can start it again if summer camps happen. At this time, the funds that I've already contributed to the DCFSA are use it or lose it. We'll see if that will change.

Wow, that's interesting!  I'd never heard that summer camps can be considered a qualifying event.  I'm going to have to look into that next year!

It would have been a moot point for us though, as it turns out.  DH was just laid off, so that definitely would have been a qualifying event.

[susquehanna]

I work for a large global company.

We just (on Tuesday) received an email that for dependent care FSA's, this does qualify as a qualifying life event.

The email also said that we have until May 8 to make this change.

I do not know if the May 8 deadline is a company-specific deadline or a deadline that the federal government set.