Enrolling in Benefits

Benefits coverage for full-time employees working a minimum of 30 hours per week.  Benefits begins on the date of hire, and you have 30 days to elect your benefits or make changes after a Qualified Life Event.

Eligible Dependents

When you enroll yourself in medical, dental, and/or vision coverage, you may also cover your eligible dependents, including:

• Your legal spouse or qualified domestic partner
• Children under the age of 26, regardless of student, dependency or marital status
• Children who are past the age of 26 and are fully dependent on you for support due to a mental or physical disability and who are indicated as such on your federal tax return.

Domestic Partners – Important Tax Information

In general (and with exceptions noted below), domestic partners cannot receive tax favored employer sponsored group health plan benefits under Federal or State law. Therefore, most employees covering domestic partners will have the Fair Market Value (FMV) of coverage imputed as income under Federal and State law. However, a domestic partner can be a federal tax dependent of an employee as a “qualifying relative,” under Code § 152 as modified by § 105(b). Any individual that satisfies the “Qualifying Relative” criteria will not have the FMV of coverage imputed as income under federal or state law. For a Domestic Partner to qualify as an employee’s Qualifying Relative and Code §152/105(b) tax dependent the domestic partner must:

1. have the same principal place of abode as the employee and be a member of the employee’s household (must not violate local law);
2. receive over half of his or her support from the employee;
3. not be anyone’s “Qualifying Child”; and
4. be a citizen or national of the U.S., a resident of the U.S., or a country contiguous to the U.S.

Similarly, the children of domestic partners (who are not otherwise children of the employee) are entitled to receive tax-free health coverage only if they qualify as Code § 152/105(b) tax dependents as a qualifying relative or as stepchildren under state law. Since one of the conditions of the qualifying relative test is that a qualifying relative cannot be the qualifying child of any other taxpayer, the child of a domestic partner will frequently fail to satisfy this test because they are generally the qualifying child of the Domestic Partner. Nonetheless, if an employee is a stepparent of his or her domestic partner’s child as recognized by the laws of the state in which the partners reside, then the employee will also be the child’s stepparent for federal income tax purposes and there will not be imputed income under federal or state law (e.g. children of CA Registered Domestic Partners are stepchildren).