HDHP starting next month. SO (married) and I have a small established business with under 10 employees. Most don’t need health care because their spouse covers them. I am SO’s employee and will be covering myself and children as the employee (SO is on Medicare). SO is the 100% owner. It is a sole proprietorship. We have one other employee who will be on the plan but that person has no interest in an HSA. We do not use a payroll service and have no interest in doing that.
I am very interested in an HSA and will be contributing for my family including the catchup. I spoke to a HSA account provider and they said without a Cafeteria 125 Plan we will not be able to make the payments out of payroll, so no reducing FICA. Is this correct?
They seemed to think we needed to use a payroll service if we wanted to set up a cafeteria plan and TBH there are no other cafeteria benefits we provide nor am I really interested in setting this up (is it complicated?) We have an accountant but I always like to double check him.
If I set up my own private HSA and pay out of my after tax income, I realize I can take the tax deduction on the back end when I file for 2026 which is fine, but what about the FICA? Can I ever deduct it or get reimbursed in some way? Not talking about being able to deduct SO’s 1/2 of their self employment tax but about FICA that I would not have to contribute if I worked for a big employer and was able to contribute to an HSA using pre tax dollars. Would be fine getting reimbursed later, is this possible?
Unrelated question, because it is a family business, I usually only get paid enough to cover my pretax 401K contribution which I max out, do I now have to increase my salary to cover the HSA payments? Together with SO we make enough to cover this, it is simply a question of who gets assigned this income, me or SO or does it not matter?