Best way to categorize pre-tax health insurance premiums?

harry askenazi

I currently use Bills & Income to enter and categorize recurring paychecks. The pre-tax health insurance contribution gets categorized as Employer Benefit:Medical

Since I don't track the employer portion of the health insurance premium, is there a reason to keep this category, as opposed to categorizing it as Medical:Health Insurance or Insurance:Health, etc?

There have been a few times where I was in between jobs and needed to pay for insurance directly, and I didnt use Employer Benefit:Medical to categorize those payments. Would like to be consistent and think about which category makes the most sense. Same for Dental. Should any of this go under Employer Benefit:… ? If so, why?

Jim_Harman

If you are tracking your gross pay and deductions, I think you should use different Categories for health insurance that is part of your paycheck and insurance that you pay yourself, because they are taxed differently. I track medical insurance premiums using a Subcategory of Insurance, not Medical. I track insurance reimbursements (when I receive them separately) as part of Medical, again because of the way they are taxed.

Quicken records the Employer Benefit:Medical Category as a reduction in your W-2 gross pay, but insurance premiums you pay are deducted on Schedule A.