Benefit Plan Set-up and Taxation for Same-Gender Spouses

gregor-ryba

Our company is based in MN and has employees in 40+ states. Is anyone willing to share their experiences or lessons learned on how to set up benefits plans and the related taxation of EE and ER premiums as it related to same-gender spouses. With the recent DOMA ruling at a Federal level, and the fact that states may or may not-recongize same-gender spouses, challenges in determining how to identify these situations and how to handle benefits and taxation is a priority for us.

You feedback would be greatly appreciated.

Legacy Contributor

We set up the plans and have the employees elect Employee + 1 or Employee + Spouse coverage tier. Then we make sure the domestic partner that is covered under that plan is coded as such on the dependent screen. We run a monthly report to determine which employee has covered a DP under the plans and then manually calculate the imputed income amounts. We use Crystal reports to accomplish this.