I see your points, but they generally only apply if you do not manage your taxes.
Taking 401K contributions it off the top of income helps actually those who don’t itemize
Filing separately the limit is 7850 and joint is 10,700, so unless you came in under that for retirement, plus say daycare, you would have exceeded the standard deduction.
Since the 401k limit is 15.5k, and daycare, as you say, is more than 5k, it is very easy to hit that limit quick, especially if you are married filing jointly.
A family can easily have 15.5k for dad, 15.5k for mom, and 5k for junior(s), adding up to 36k, which is way over the standard w/o having a mortgage.
Re Medical spending account claims –
They pay medical when you submit a claim and do not wait for all the deductions. If you use your entire election by February for example, they reimburse you the whole enchilada BEFORE they deduct from your paycheck.
No, that’s not true, at least not for any health care deduction program I have seen (UniAccount and FedGov). One may put in a claim, but you are not reimbursed until the money comes in. I would really like to see a program that reimburses prior to getting funded–what is yours?
Yes, the dependent car portion reimbursements are held up until after deducted from your check. However, these are typically regular predicatble amounts that you have to spend for day care.
If they are regular and expected, as you say, then you can easily take the deduction at the beginning of the year when you fill out your W-4. You do not need to wait until the end of the tax year–unless you enjoy lending Uncle Sam money.
And, if for some reason you don’t use up either account–you still give up the money.
My point was (and is) that if they really wanted to help the taxpayer, rather than help a little while pandering to the financial institution lobby, they would simply let you write it off.
It is simply wrong, in my book, for a family to put 31k into retirement, and 5k into daycare, but not get one dime closer to the standard deduction.
ucodegen It is much better to have the money taken out pre-tax. I agree, sort of (after all you can reduce your tax burden ahead of time with the W-4), but my issue is that it does not apply to your deduction limit–which was done on purpose, and that is my beef.
