Bucks Blog: Why You Don’t Have the Commuter Tax Break

So here is what was easily the most entertaining reporting moment putting together this weekend’s Your Money column about pretax commuter benefits:

A colleague who is normally pretty mild-mannered (and really on top of his money) got super-exercised when I chided him a bit about not yet signing on for $500 or so of annual tax savings. His response? He was frustrated with having to sign up for yet another card and deal with even more hassle in exchange for getting a little bit back for himself. He was also not happy about disclosing his personal information to yet another source.

Plenty of others have reached similar breaking points. The human resources staff at your employer may be wary of taking on another administrative task, so they may make a decision not to offer the benefit at all, for anyone. Wary (or is it weary?) workers like my colleague may not have any more time or patience for additional administrative tasks. And then there are all of the independent workers who can’t even choose to sign up, since only employers can offer the tax break. (Where is the fairness in that?!)

Do you have a pretax commuter benefit? How is it working out for you? (And apologies to readers out of the urban/suburban/public transport loop who may wonder what language we’re speaking here or resent the fact that some of us have access to this tax break.)

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=5fbf23acddc61a536f0b172855c408d1