By now, employers across the country have implemented return-to-work policies that have brought hundreds of thousands of employees back to the office or some other facility. If your organization is one of them, you may have also reestablished something else: a qualified transportation plan. (And if you haven’t, this may be a fringe benefit worth considering.)

Under a qualified transportation plan, employees who wish to participate make pretax compensation deferrals for eligible commuting costs. These generally include transit passes, vanpooling and qualified parking fees. Employers may also make contributions. The plans reduce participants’ taxable income and can lower employers’ payroll costs.

However, a common question often arises once qualified transportation plans are up and running: What happens to the plan balances of employees who either leave their jobs or are terminated by the employer-sponsor? Let’s take a look.

Following the rules

In such situations, your choices are limited by two rules that apply to all qualified transportation plans. First, plans are prohibited from reimbursing qualified transportation expenses incurred and paid after termination — whether voluntary or involuntary. Second, refunds of unused balances are prohibited as well. These rules apply equally to pretax compensation deferrals and employer contributions.

A terminated employee can request reimbursement of qualified transportation expenses that were incurred or paid during employment, so long as the expenses are submitted before the end of the plan’s applicable “run-out period.” A run-out period is the time after the close of a coverage period during which an expense can still be submitted for reimbursement.

However, terminated employees who don’t have enough pretermination expenses to exhaust their balances, or who fail to timely submit those expenses, can’t use the remainder for postemployment expenses. Also, they can’t get refunds because of the “no former employees” and “no refund” rules.

Designing your plan

Plan design may influence the likelihood of departing employees having to forfeit their balances. For example, a plan will be less likely to have such forfeitures if it limits each month’s pretax compensation deferral to the amount needed to obtain an employer-provided monthly transit pass at month’s end.

Most qualified transportation plans, however, involve at least some risk of forfeiture. Your plan document and employee communication materials should specify what will happen if a forfeiture occurs. Unused balances may be:

• Retained by the employer,
• Used to pay plan expenses, or
• Contributed tax-free to other participants’ accounts on a fair basis (subject to the monthly statutory limits that apply to qualified transportation benefits).

When creating or reviewing your plan design, work with an attorney to consider state legal implications, such as escheat laws. This is particularly important if your plan will be “funded” (that is, funds will be held in separate participant accounts) as opposed to “unfunded” (in other words, participant accounts will be bookkeeping entries and funds will remain in your general assets).

To minimize forfeitures, many employers contact participants throughout the year to inform them of their account balances and remind them to submit reimbursement requests on a timely basis. Employees with large account balances may need to change their elections to use up the funds.

Preparing for the challenges

Under the right circumstances, a qualified transportation plan can be a highly valued fringe benefit for employees who must commute to work every day. However, as you can see, there are administrative challenges to prepare for and, if necessary, overcome.

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