HSA Reimbursement time limit

[perrytime]

did a fair amount of web searching, including publication 969, and haven't found the answer.

HSA account is 4 years old, self employed, self funded HSA.

HSA account is at a credit union, they don't know squat about them.

It would appear I can go back 1,2,3 years to my out of pocket, qualified expenses that I never used in any way, like meeting deductible, tax write off, I can't think of anything else.

I have never pulled any $ from HSA account before, It would seem the credit union will report a soon to be reimbursement this 2015 calendar year even though am reimburseing for expenses in 2014.

what say ye?

[MichaelB]

AFAIK a qualified health care expense is eligible to be paid for with an HSA withdrawal if it was incurred after you established the HSA account and was not used to itemize medical expenses for a tax deduction, and there is no time limit.

[Mulligan]

Depending on your individual circumstances you may consider paying medical bills out of pocket and moving your HSA to one that allows long term investing. That way you receive the triple net benefit from a long term investment horizon an HSA can provide. You can keep the bills indefinitely and use them if the money is ever needed.
After a couple years of contributing to a low interest bearing account, I made a commitment to pay out of pocket and am pleased with how the HSA is growing. Hopefully I will be able to continue this until age 65.


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[RunningBum]

Keep receipts for all eligible expenses so that when you do eventually draw against them, you have some proof that you can withdraw tax free in case you are audited.

[travelover]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mulligan Depending on your individual circumstances you may consider paying medical bills out of pocket and moving your HSA to one that allows long term investing. That way you receive the triple net benefit from a long term investment horizon an HSA can provide. You can keep the bills indefinitely and use them if the money is ever needed. After a couple years of contributing to a low interest bearing account, I made a commitment to pay out of pocket and am pleased with how the HSA is growing. Hopefully I will be able to continue this until age 65.

That is what I'm doing, too. I'll spend it down in big chunks when I hit Medicare.

[Texas Proud]

Quote:

Originally Posted by MichaelB AFAIK a qualified health care expense is eligible to be paid for with an HSA withdrawal if it was incurred after you established the HSA account and was not used to itemize medical expenses for a tax deduction, and there is no time limit.

According to a class I took... this is correct....

The speaker invested his money in Apple stock many many years ago (since I took the class many years ago )... said he was not going to take out any money until he retired.... and he was saving every receipt so he could prove the withdrawal....

[audreyh1]

I expect to pay future bills - primarily eligible Medicare payments.

But I'm still saving current bills "just in case".

[MooreBonds]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Mulligan Depending on your individual circumstances you may consider paying medical bills out of pocket and moving your HSA to one that allows long term investing. That way you receive the triple net benefit from a long term investment horizon an HSA can provide. You can keep the bills indefinitely and use them if the money is ever needed. After a couple years of contributing to a low interest bearing account, I made a commitment to pay out of pocket and am pleased with how the HSA is growing. Hopefully I will be able to continue this until age 65.

I have used the HSA as a secondary retirement account, since I wasn't able to contribute to a ROTH, and since you can deduct contributions to an HSA regardless of income. I hope I don't need the balances until reaching Medicare, and even then hope it will be more than enough to fund post-65 heatlhcare expenses.

Somehow, my HSA wound up being my best-performing account by far since inception back in 2003 or so when they first created HSAs. So it'll have a decent balance to take care of healthcare expenses, as well as possibly be a supplemental retirement account post-65 with just income taxes taken out.

The only bad thing with accumulating receipts until years later for HSA withdrawals is that it is not inflation-adjusted...so waiting 20-30 years to use the receipts to offset HSA withdrawals results in a "loss" of nearly 50% of the healthcare expense value due to inflation.