The Kansas Targeted Employment Act is enacted to incentivize employers to employ people with developmental disabilities in Kansas. For tax years 2022 through 2027, there will be a credit allowed against income, privilege, or premium tax liabilities imposed upon a taxpayer that qualifies as a targeted employment business or taxpayer outsourcing work to a targeted employment business for every hour that an eligible individual is employed in a calendar year in a targeted employment business and receives earned income as compensation. The credit only applies to wages for hours worked and not for any compensation for paid leave and is equal to 50% of the wages paid to the eligible individual on an hourly basis, up to a maximum credit of $7.50 per hour.
The credit is non-refundable, cannot be carried forward, and can only be used once each taxable year against tax liability imposed by only one of the income, privilege, or premium taxes. The maximum of all credits allowed each year will be $5 million. “Earned income” means compensation paid to a Kansas employee for competitive integrated employment that is equal to or greater than the minimum wage and is performed in a competitive integrated setting. “Targeted employment business” means those employers employing eligible individuals in competitive integrated employment in a competitive integrated setting and who are authorized to do business in Kansas. “Targeted employment business” does not include a community service provider. These provisions expire on January 1, 2028, except those credits earned in tax year 2027 may be awarded by the Secretary of Revenue.
Spouse Saver helps cover up to 100 percent of out-of-pocket expenses like copays, coinsurance, and deductibles during doctor and hospital visits incurred by an employee’s spouse.
This cost-saving resource is possible once an employee enrolls in their employer’s group health insurance plan. Instead of adding their spouse to the plan, the spouse can take advantage of their employer’s group health insurance plan. Once enrolled in the plan, the spouse provides proof of coverage to the employee. Once verified, the employee’s company sets up an account for the spouse to use for their in-network, out-of-pocket expenses. To learn more about Spouse Saver and review other useful information, check here.
The calendar has flipped to April, and consumers have already saved up to $100 billion using Health Savings Accounts (HSA) this year, per Devenir, an HSA investment consultant. As these numbers continue to soar, the time to invest in an HSA is now. Here are three, brief advantages of doing so:
Can reduce insurance premiums by combining an HSA with a qualified High Deductible Health Plan (HDHP)
The HSA’s unused funds roll over annually, meaning they can be used for future expenses
Contributions are made tax-free, grow tax-free, and can be withdrawn tax-free to pay for qualified medical expenses
It’s never too late to invest in an HSA and join the thousands of participants already reaping the benefits.
What if there was a way to ease the stress participants may face with their account(s)? Now there is, thanks to NueSynergy’s Participant Portal. This innovative platform delivers a myriad of options for participants to stay on top of what matters most to them, including checking account balances, submitting expenses and claims, resolving debit card transactions, and managing alerts.
Another benefit of the Participant Portal is that all deadlines, contributions, and informative charts are easily accessible, making it seamless to track benefits like Flexible Spending Accounts (FSA), Health Savings Accounts (HSA), and Health Reimbursement Arrangements (HRA). Pair the Participant Portal with the NueSynergy smart mobile app and you can easily manage and view your account whenever you want, wherever you want.
NueSynergy attained excellent results in operational efficiency while taking home an APEX award at the 2022 Alegeus Client Success Summit in Nashville from April 3-6. The APEX award recognizes client success across growth, innovation, and partnership excellence. It is the company’s fifth accolade in the past eight years and its most recent since 2020. To learn more about NueSynergy and its accomplishments, check out our latest news release.
Congress has passed, and the President has signed, omnibus spending legislation that (among other things) temporarily exempts telehealth and other remote care services from certain restrictions affecting health savings account (HSA) eligibility. By way of background, tax-advantaged contributions generally cannot be made to an HSA unless the account holder is covered by a qualifying high-deductible health plan (HDHP) and does not have disqualifying non-HDHP coverage.
In the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act), Congress created exceptions to those rules to facilitate the use of telehealth during the COVID pandemic, but those exceptions applied only to plan years beginning on or before December 31, 2021. The new legislation—the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2022—restores these exceptions for the last nine months of 2022.
The new legislation amends two key provisions in the Code 223 rules for HSAs. First, it provides that telehealth and other remote care services will be considered disregarded coverage—and thus will not cause a loss of HSA eligibility—during the months beginning after March 31, 2022, and before January 1, 2023. Second, during that nine-month period, plans may provide coverage for telehealth and other remote care services before the HDHP minimum deductible is satisfied without losing their HDHP status. Both amendments apply to the stated months without regard to the HDHP’s plan year. The relief does not apply for the first three months of 2022 so some plans (e.g., calendar-year plans) must still apply their minimum deductible to telehealth and other remote care services during those months. [EBIA Comment: Plans with 2021 plan years that started on or after April 1, 2021, should be unaffected by the three-month gap that affects other plans, because their CARES Act relief will not expire until those plan years end.]
EBIA Comment: HDHPs are not required to waive their minimum deductible for telehealth and other remote services during the additional relief period, so some plan sponsors may conclude that a midyear change to take advantage of the restored exceptions is too difficult to communicate and administer, and not worth the effort. Other plan sponsors, those who assumed Congress would extend the CARES Act relief without a gap and covered telehealth during the first three months of 2022 without applying the minimum deductible, may have a different problem: determining whether their plans can and should apply the minimum deductible to telehealth and other remote services retroactively to the gap period. Some covered individuals may be able to avoid the adverse HSA-eligibility consequences of their plan’s failure to satisfy the minimum deductible requirement during the first three months of 2022 by using the full contribution rule, which allows a full year’s worth of HSA contributions to be made by someone who is HSA-eligible for only a portion of the year. (This rule is also sometimes referred to as the “last-month rule” or the “no-proration rule.”) But that rule may not be available to all affected plan participants because some may not be HSA-eligible on December 1, 2022, and some may not remain HSA-eligible throughout the 13-month testing period beginning on that date.
