New regulations have been finalized to allow employers to pay into employee accounts:
The Trump administration finalized some new regulations late last week for those tax-preferred accounts. In short, employers can pay money into their employees’ health reimbursement accounts, and then the workers can take that money and use it to buy insurance on the individual market. Companies can alternatively pay into a different kind of HRA that their workers can then use to pay directly for health care or for a “short-term limited duration” insurance plan that does not have to comply with Obamacare’s rules about preexisting conditions.
Employers must be aware that:
The regulations do put some important standards in place. For example, employers can’t pick and choose individual workers to provide HRA money to, and they cannot offer the same employees both a traditional employer-sponsored insurance plan and an HRA.
