 Personal Finance PowerPoint Presentation. Dental insurance and flexible spending account FSA. Prepare to get financially fit by practicing personal finance. Insurance is part of our long-term risk mitigation strategy where we follow the adage of measure twice cut once, putting a formal process in place, looking something like setting the goals, develop a plan to reach them, put the plan in action, review the results, repeat the process periodically. Most of this information can be found from Investopedia using your flexible spending account, the FSA, for dental care, which you can find online. Take a look at the references resources. Continue your research from there. This is by Eric Whiteside, updated August 28th, 2020. So in prior presentations, we've been looking at insurance in general, then moving to the medical insurance, which can be more complex in some ways due to the industry as well as the rules and regulations. Then we moved on to the dental area and the dental insurance, which has some similarities to the medical, but some differences. So you can take a look at prior presentations related to it. Now we're looking at the flexible spending account as it relates specifically to the dental care. So using your flexible spending account, the FSA for dental care. Flexible spending accounts, those are the FSAs are accounts that allow employees to obtain reimbursement for various medical expenses. So this is something that you might be getting through say your employer, for example, and it's an attempt for the employer's money to go further. How could the employee's money go further would be nice if they could pay you and not be as subject to the same kind of taxes like federal income taxes, if it was some kind of other benefit that wouldn't be subject to the taxes. And this is kind of the idea. So possibly might not be subject to the withholdings. So for example, so because FSAs are classified as tax exempt savings accounts, no employment or federal income taxes are deducted from the contributions. So the internal revenue service, the IRS states that an FSA has no reported requirements for federal tax returns. Distributions are free provided they are used for qualified medical expenses. So there's the catch. You got to put stuff into the FSA. That means it's restricted to some degree because when you take the money out, you have to use it for specific purposes because you put it in there and you got kind of the tax benefit, basically because the idea was that you're going to use it for specific purposes, which of course are the qualified medical expenses that you're going to be spending it on. So can an FSA be used for dental expenses? Yes or no question. Yes or no people. No, that's not what we're going to get. You know what we're going to get. Well, it depends. So eligible expenses include deductibles and co-payments. However, not all types of dental procedures are covered. You can imagine the ones that might not be covered, the ones that you kind of want to get. Most likely, right? The teeth whitening and the the instilline teeth straightening kind of stuff, all that kind of stuff, which is is possibly into the category of cosmetic. You would think might not be the ones that are going to be covered. So dental expenses that can be paid with the FSAs. When it comes to using an FSA for dental expense reimbursement rules, generally follow the deduction rules as spelled out in publication 502. So if you want more detail on that, you can actually go to the IRS website, irs.gov, irs.gov. Take a look at look up publication 502. The basic guidelines is that anything that treats or prevents a dental disease is eligible for FSA coverage. So that means the not, you know, not the stuff that's going to be cosmetic generally. So right, that's the teeth whitening, of course. The fillings and the sealants, the crowns, the binding, the dentures, the tooth extraction. Don't, not that. Don't inlays and onlays, all diagnostic and preventative services. And then this thing, I don't know exactly what it is. Treatments for gingivitis, tempera, I don't know how to say that. Joint syndrome and disorder, gum, recession and oral surgery. Oh, okay. So expenses that are excluded, which ones aren't included? Unfortunately, you know what they are. They're the cosmetic procedures. Those are the ones I wanted to get though. I want the teeth whitening. No, such as the teeth whitening, the veneers and cosmetic orthodontics are not covered by the FSA. It's horrible. So if you want to get your teeth bright and white, you'll have to pay out of pocket as cosmetic dentistry is simply not on the list. So in fact, you can't even buy toothpaste. It seems just ridiculous. A white smile, a nice, you know, with your teeth nice and white just, you know, spreads joy throughout the world. You would think that there's the positive externalities effect from an economic standpoint, which means that you would think that it would be subsidized, I would think, but in the case. In fact, you can't even buy toothpaste of any kind or dental floss using FSA funds, as they are not eligible expenses. Oral pain remedies, however, are typically covered by plans. There is an obvious discrepancy with orthodontia. While the IRS says that some procedures treat diseases and some are cosmetic, there is no specific set of rules that defines the specifics regarding which procedures qualify for coverage under an FSA. And even with the dentistry, it's a little bit easier to kind of kind of define what's going to happen in normal routine dental procedures than in the medical field. But obviously, even there, as things change and we want things to change, we want things to improve going forward, it's kind of hard when you put this list together. These are the list of procedures. It tends to make things more static. You put them now in stone. You put them on paper. So it's because a little bit difficult to say what is deductible and what falls into this category and that category. So your orthodontist should be able to help you determine what your plan may cover in that situation. Know your plan. Flexible spending plans vary. The IRS provides general rules for FSAs, but each FSA provider interprets those rules differently. So obviously, when you got the law, any good lawyer knows when you take a look at the actual law, you might interpret it somewhat differently. So you want to be within the rule of law, but words are funny things. They're symbols and whatnot, and we might read them a little bit differently depending on the policy. So talk to your employer and your plan provider before you start any course of treatment. Your dental office should be willing to coordinate with your insurance provider to make sure the services you are receiving are covered under your FSA.