Steadily accumulating money in both savings vehicles can pump up your retirement reserves.
There are lots of reasons to love a health savings account, or HSA. An HSA complements its cousin, the individual retirement account, or IRA. Steadily accumulating money in both of these savings vehicles can pump up your total retirement reserves.
As a refresher, these are the rules for HSAs:
■ You can sign up for an HSA if you have a qualifying high-deductible health insurance plan. HSAs are designed to help you pay the medical costs that aren’t covered by the plan.
■ The savings are an above-theline tax deduction, which means you don’t have to itemize. The money is subtracted from your earnings before you arrive at your adjusted gross income, or AGI.
■ There are no phaseouts. It doesn’t matter how much money you make, you can still deduct the whole thing — up to $3,400 for indi- viduals in 2017. Contribution limits for families are $6,750 a year. Pres- ident Donald Trump and Republicans want to expand limits on HSA contributions to $6,550 for individu- als and $13,100 for families. An addi- tional $1,000 catch-up contribution is permitted for those 55 and older.
Here are four ways to manage HSAs with IRAs to maximize the benefits. exhausted your HSA, but you haven’t contributed anything so far in the current year. If you roll the money over from your IRA, even if you are younger than 55, there won’t be any penalties as long as you eventually spend the money on health care. Plus, you won’t have to pay any taxes, as you would if you withdrew the money from an IRA.
ROLLOVER CAN GET YOU OUT OF A BIN
Only once in your lifetime, you can roll money from your IRA into your HSA. You are limited to the NO RMDS WITH AN HSA amount the IRS says you can conWhen you reach 70½, the IRS tribute in a year, and if you decide requires that you take required to roll the maximum allowable, you minimum distributions, or RMDs, can’t contribute any more that year. from your traditional IRA, but there
Why would you want to do this? are no such requirements with an Let’s say you have an unexpected HSA. That means money saved in health emergency and you have an HSA can continue to grow tax- free until you need it.
If you designate your surviv- ing spouse as the beneficiary of your HSA, upon your death, it will become your spouse’s HSA — more tax-free growth and no RMDs for that person, either.
But be aware, if you don’t have a spouse or you designate some- one else as the beneficiary, the HSA becomes taxable income to your beneficiary in the year of your death.
IT ISN’T NOW OR NEVER
With an HSA, there is no time limit on withdrawing qualified medical expenses.
You can save your medical receipts and claim them when you need the money — even years later. In the meantime, the money sits in your HSA and grows tax-free.
If you are contemplatingthis strategy, be a good record-keeper. The IRS says you “must keep records sufficient to later show that the distributions were exclusively to pay or reimburse qualified medical expenses, that the qualified medical expenses have not been previously paid or reimbursed from another source and that the medical expenses have not been taken as an itemized deduction in any prior taxable year.”
MEDICARE AND HSAS DON’T ALWAYS MIX
At 65, most people sign up for Medicare Part A, the premium-free hospital portion of Medicare, even if they are still working and getting their employer’s health insurance. But the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services as well as the IRS say that anyone who has signed up for Medicare cannot continue to save in an HSA. That’s because Medicare is not a high-deductible plan.
However, if you turn 65 and already have an HSA, you can use the money you’ve accumulated to pay the deductibles, premiums and copays of Medicare parts A, B, C (Medicare Advantage) and D, plus out-of-pocket expenses like vision and dental. Medigap plan premiums are off-limits.
If you were to pay for these expenses with money from your traditional IRA, you’d have to pay taxes on the cash you withdraw. But HSAs are a triple treat — the money goes in tax-free, grows taxfree and there are no taxes when you take it out and spend it on health care costs.