Cafeteria Plans with 2 Eligibility dates?

[Guest hooktx]

Can a company have 2 different eligibility dates if you are offering the 125 for health premiums and for FSA accounts such as medical and child care.

In other words could new employees join for health premiums within 3 months of employment but join after 1 year for medical or child care savings accounts? Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

[Bob R]

I've seen this done in many plans. You won't find anything specifically permitting it. But, there is nothing prohibiting it and I therefore think you can do it. While there is no guidance on how to test nondiscrimination as to eligiblity under the cafe plan when there are 2 conditions, I'd apply the same rule we use for retirement plans, i.e., permissive disaggregation where each benefit is treated like a separate plan. Arguably, because there are no aggregation rules for cafe plans, it seems reasonable that if you can do this with 2 separate cafe plans, you ought to be able to do it under 1 plan.