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June 1, 2019
Question

I started a family HSA thinking both my husbands insurance and mine were HDHP. I found out that mine isn’t. The 1099- Sa was in my name. How do I fix this. Please help.

  • June 1, 2019
  • 1 reply
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Taxes have been paid in this money. And neither employer contributed to the account.

1 reply

June 1, 2019
First, you need to contact your HSA custodian and report that everything (if anything) that you spent out of your HSA was a "mistaken distribution". The custodian - if they accept this request - will ask you to complete a form and then send them a check for that amount (i.e., you have to pay the distribution back).

The custodian does not have to do this, so be nice to them. Also, you must do this before the due date of the return. If you can't get it done quickly, file an extension to give yourself some time.

Second, when you do the HSA interview in TurboTax (do a Search for "hsa" (lower case and without the double quotes) and jump to it), when asked if you had HDHP coverage for any month in 2018, you must answer "no". This will cause all of your HSA contributions (from any source) to be declared in excess. If you made contributions directly to your HSA (I can't tell if you made any contributions through your employer), then the contributions are "erased" and removed from your return. The excess contributions will be sent to you as a check by the HSA custodian. If you made contributions through your employer (you will see a code W in box 12 on your W-2), then this amount will be added to Other Income, line 21 on Schedule 1, because this amount had been previously removed from Wages in boxes 1, 3, and 5.

Third, if your husband indeed had a HDHP coverage in 2018 AND was not covered by your non-HDHP policy, then you have about two weeks (until April 15th) to open an HSA in his name for 2018 and make a contribution to it. Note that if you do this, you have to tell the HSA custodian that the contirbution is for 2018, because their default would be to assign it to 2019.

NOTENOTENOTE: he cannot do this if he was covered by any conflicting coverage, such as your non-HDHP insurance.

Whatever you two contribute to his 2018 HSA is subject to the annual HSA contribution limit (assuming that he was covered on December 1, 2018) of either $3,450 (Self) or $6,900 (Family) - but this depends on the type of HDHP policy he has, not the fact that you are married. If he has a Self-only policy, then he has the lower limit.

"Taxes have been paid in this money." Sorry, I do not know what this means, since you don't pay taxes on either HSA contributions nor distributions. If you still have a question after reading this, please post a new question here at AnswerXchange giving the particulars.
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