In the Law360 article, “Legal Risks Loom For Employers Protecting Abortion Access”, Groom principal Katie Bjornstad Amin discussed the tax hurdles faced by employers wanting to offer more generous abortion medical coverage following the Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health.
When discussing travel benefits, Amin said “there are limits under the code for what’s considered medical care for travel,” for example, including a $50 per night hotel limit for lodging set by the IRS. If employers want to cover everything, though, they run into new problems.
Amin said employers “need to decide — do we want to pay all expenses, and some of them might be taxable?”
If that’s the case, Amin said, employers run into the issue of how “the plan needs to be giving information back to the employer about who received the taxable benefit.”
“And depending upon how limited the travel benefit is, if it’s just for abortion travel, some employers don’t want that information,” Amin added.
Amin said she’s watching to see if more states come out with criminal laws instead of civil laws, “where there isn’t as strong of a preemption argument as there is in the civil space.”
To read the article, click here.
