Mid-year Health FSA limit amendment

[Guest JimD-EBR]

An employer would like to change their plan's Health FSA limit from $3,000 to $5,000 mid-plan year. May they make this mid-year amendment? Can they allow participants to make a mid-year election change based on this amendment? Or is the new limit ($5,000) only available to those who have a qualifying mid-year change in status event or those who become newly eligible after the effective date of the amendment?

[oriecat]

I ran this through the Change of Status website (www.changeofstatus.com) and put it as a Significant Improvement of Benefit or Design, and it came back as no change allowed for FSAs. I'm not sure if you can run it through as something else and get a different answer, but that seemed most appropriate to me.