My work offers this but I’m a bit embarrassed to ask HR, is this is just pre tax money on a card for transit? Can I buy a metro card or just use the card they give me?
In: Economics
Usually they just mail you a metrocard. The difference is that they pay for it with pretax money. You’ll have to ask HR to find out if they mail you the card directly or if it’s some other setup where you buy the metrocard yourself and get reimbursed with pretax money.
It’s a benefit allowed by the IRS, such as an HSA.
If you take transport instead of drive/bike to work, you tell your job to takeout $X of your paycheck, you then likely get a metro card issued by the company so they can track the usage, and then your pre-tax dollars are used to pay for it instead of your post-tax dollars.
You’re ultimately going to have to ask HR… but:
It may be a system where you can sign up to buy your monthly train ticket through their system. It will be paid for with pre-tax dollars – which means the money you’re paying for your commuting expenses doesn’t count as taxable income.
It’s been a while since I had that benefit, but when I did, I got my monthly commuter rail ticket electronically.
I guess it’s possible that they give you a card for transit sort of like a flex-spending account for health insurance.
From my personal experience:
At first the company would just send you monthly cards for your transit service of choice. Which was a problem for me because the cards were not recoverable, or they got mailed late and I often lose shit like that. So one late or lost monthly card per year = I end up paying more than I saved in tax for the whole year. With a transit card I buy myself I can always claim the card as lost and get a replacement card for the balance of the month at no cost.
Now the company gives you a debit account and mails you a debit card which is a new account and log in and website that’s all different from your other benefits, FSA, etc., even if the debit ‘bank’ is the same as other accounts you have nothing gets linked so I hope you write this all down.
You can use the debit card to buy tickets at machines or via ticketing apps for transit and it works pretty easily. You can’t use for transit related things like parking, that would be yet another account with yet another card and yet another log in.
Finally, you have a little past the year end to use the account or you lose it. So come mid-December (assume your benefits follow the calendar year) if you have money left it looks like everyone is getting $20 metrocards in their stockings!
It really depends on the company. Mine has direct integration with most major transit agencies, so I can use it to just fill up my pre-existing personal transit account using pre-tax dollars. If you really do the math on this, it doesn’t save you *that* much, but it’s something. (even if you’re in the highest tax bracket, it’s only going to be a 40% ish discount, and for most people much less than that)
Why is OP afraid of talking to HR, that’s literally their job. Although there are regional differences, I will admit. I used to work in Chicago and all but 1 person afaik in the office of ~50 took public transit to work, it was just what you did. We had the benefit and everyone used it. Then we were bought by a company from TX. We asked our new HR about it and they were really confused about it. They did figure it out eventually because we weren’t letting it go, but in their office it was 100% drivers, so they just never had to look into it before.
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