Maine Nesties
mesa81
member
Dear Community,
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
Taxes/ Childcare FSA
Daycare gets deducted on your taxes, right? Does anyone have a Dependent Care Account (FSA) thru their employer that does the pre-tax deduction/ reimbursement for childcare? I can take up to $5000 out pretax which is about half of my annual daycare costs. I don't know how taxes work if you have a FSA though-- not sure if I can deduct the other half of my costs... I tried to look it up last night on the IRS site but got so confused. Can anyone explain it to me? Thanks 
Re: Taxes/ Childcare FSA
It's a pre-tax deduction so you can't get more money back at the end of the year. It is a use it or lose it thing, but sounds like you have that covered.
We just did open enrollment for next year. My employer contributes 10% up to $455, so I can have $4545 taken out of my checks for the year. And I dont pay tax on that $4545. I've found it actually balances out. We get less back at the end of the year (for 2010 tax year, we paid the state of maine, but got a refund on federal) but my net take home is roughly the same as my checks before I started having the daycare savings taken out.
Just remember that (as far as UniAccount goes) you can't take out money that isn't there and the services have to have been rendered to be able to collect the money. I usually file on Wednesday and get a direct deposit on Tuesday. So for Nov 14-18, I filed today and will get a deposit on Tuesday.
HTH
Here's the 2010 IRS publication on child and dependent care expenses:
http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p503.pdf
Thank you for sharing this. My open enrollment is this month, and we are putting the boys in daycare 2 days a week. I was leaning towards using the Dependent Care, and I think you have just convinced me. Thank you!
You actually can get a little something more because you have two kids. Do the dependent care FSA for $5k, then when you file your taxes you should be able to claim another $1k toward the child care tax credit.
Explanation: You can use up to $3k in expenses for one kid or $6k for two or more kids, but it's reduced by any money you had in the FSA. For one kid, the $5k is greater than the $3k, so there's nothing additional available from the credit. For two kids, the $6k toward the credit is reduced by the $5k from the FSA, leaving $1k you can claim for the child care tax credit.
Sorry if this was confusing. Your tax professional and/or software program will know what to do.