The same Federal regulation that authorizes you to have the exemption on your contributions to an FSA also requires that you use funds for medical services provided/incurred during the Plan Year.  Each employer is required to comply with this provision in order to afford you this tax advantage.

It’s difficult to plan on expenses before they happen.  You however, can generally predict some recurring expenses like monthly or quarterly maintenance prescription costs, diabetic supplies, lasik surgery, orthodontist payments and more.  Have you used the planning tools and qualifying expenses table to help think through some expenses that you can predict for the upcoming year?

This depends on your goals and objectives.  Some things you will want to consider are:

• Will the employer pay into this plan to ease the burden of a HDHP?
• Are funds portable or restricted to coverage while the participant is employed?
• Do we want the unused funds to be available in future years, possibly saved for retirement medical expenses?
• Is the goal to simply give the participant tax-free dollars or to restrict the use of these funds to help those that actually have medical expense in the current year?
• Do we want the use of employer contributions to this account to be restricted to specific expenses (i.e., deductibles only, deductibles and Rx only, etc.)?
• We want to move to a higher deductible health plan but not a qualified HDHP.  What are the advantages and disadvantages of the HRA and FSA options?  Do I need to offer both?  How can they be set up to compliment each other and still comply with regulations?

Tri-Star can assist you with some of these issues.  Please contact us for further assistance!

The IRS requires that all payment of funds from an FSA, HRA or pre-tax transportation program be substantiated by documentation from an independent third party.  IRS regulations allow, in some circumstances, for the transactions to be electronically, automatically supported.  This will occur with some medical payments made accessing FSA funds.

Please follow this link to understand auto-substantiated card use.  It is important to us here at Tri-Star to electronically support what we can, legally, to provide the best solution possible for your health care FSA as possible.  When we do ask for support, it is because we are required to do so to comply with Federal regulations.

Each participant is assigned an account number by Tri-Star.  This account number is printed on participant statements and is available through the Participant Login on our web site.

Your account number, name and address are automatically completed on the claim form when you eFile claims.  This saves you having to keep track of the account number and saves you the time of writing this out on a claim form each time you want to file a claim.  Follow the eFile link to learn more about this time-saver!

It is important that you provide either your social security number or this account number when filing claims so we can identify you.  We need to be able to identify you so we process your claim timely!  Thanks!

You can actually file your claim (fill in the claim form) by selecting the Participant Login and enter the claim directly into Tri-Star’s system.  Your name, address and account number are completed for you and you are simply entering the expense information you would complete on the claim form.  When you are finished, you print out the completed claim form, sign it and fax it to a toll-free number.  This gets your claim into Tri-Star’s systems faster, gets priority processing and ultimately gets money back to you faster.  If you want to read more about this, please select eFile under Participant Services.