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sciguyCO t1_iu5sc32 wrote

Yes, at that income you get more tax benefit from the DCFSA vs. the dependent care credit.

  • The credit saves you 20% on up to $3000 (for a single kid) of your qualified expenses, subtracted from your tax liability.
  • The DCFSA lets you put away up $5000, getting your a deduction on your taxable income straight on your paycheck. That contributed money is ignored for federal income tax (24% at your income) + payroll tax (7.6%, though if you or wife are above the social security wage cap, your effective rate may be lower) + state income tax (if applies).

If you have more than one kid, you can benefit from a mix of the two. For two dependents, the cap on "qualified expenses" for the care credit is $6000 (and annoyingly doesn't increase for kids 3+). To prevent "double dipping" on tax savings, any "employer care benefit" you receive (like a DCFSA) is subtracted from that capped amount. With two kids, that ends up leaving up to $1000 of expenses "left over" after taking away the DCFSA that you can still use for the care credit, getting you a $200 tax savings. With a single kid, the $5k DCFSA allowance is > the $3k capped expense, leaving $0 to get any credit against.

As an FYI, the rules for the dependent care credit and DCFSAs were completely different in 2021, but those have expired. There were changes enacted as part of the "American Rescue Plan", but that was a one-year-only thing. So if you're looking up information, make sure that what you're looking at is specifically for 2022 (or for / before 2020, which is what the rules reverted to).

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