Requirement to hand over FSA-relevant information?

Your state's Secretary of State files; state and/or local entities that regulate daycare providers; health department (assuming they inspect daycare facilities); UCC filings; public records for recordings of liens and loan documents. Probably lots more but these quickly came to mind.

On Monday, May 6, 2013 8:33:02 AM UTC-7, Rich Carreiro wrote: | I have a friend who is in a dispute with a daycare | provider. The daycare provider is refusing to issue | receipts for services already rendered and paid for | and is refusing to say what their EIN is.

Sounds like it may be time to find a new daycare provider (yes, I know that can be tricky in some places). But assuming that the daycare provider wants to continue having your friend as a customer, it seems that they should provide the information. Unless they have some other reason for not wanting the transaction to be "on-the-books".

The books part was the first thing I thought of, too. Did the OP pay in cash?

While it's not entirely apropos, puublication 503 includes the following text when describing how to fill out form 2441.

"You can show due diligence by getting and keeping the provider's completed Form W-10 or one of the other sources of information listed earlier. Care providers can be penalized if they do not provide this information to you or if they provide incorrect information."

Good information.

If the provider doesn't realize she needs to give the information out, and doesn't want to give out her personal social security number, OP can suggest that she go to the IRS website and get a tax ID number for her business.

No, my friend paid by check. And there's no indication they're refusing to give this info out to anyone else.

I actually eventually found the EIN for my friend using MA's "search for registered corporations" website. The daycare (which my friend has since removed her child from) turn out to be a MA LLC and its (public) certificate of organization has the EIN on it.

The need for a receipt is that my friend's FSA provider won't release funds without a receipt on the daycare's letterhead that has the child's name, dates of service, and amount paid. So just providing the EIN and copies of cancelled checks isn't good enough for FSA reimbursement (which is the issue right now, not Form 2441).

So, an (apparently) non-monetary dispute is at the heart of the matter? Stepping outside of the tax and FSA box for a moment, if the dispute is not about payment, then what *is* the difficulty?

(I assume it is not about payment, since you say the services were paid for. Or, perhaps subsequent services were not paid for? That would be a different story).

Was someone's ego wounded? Would an apology be worth it to get the FSA reimbursement? Or maybe log on to Yelp and get revenge... (only a semi-serious suggestion).

Is the maximum amount of daycare reimbursement from the FSA account $2,500 total, or $2,500 per child?

Assuming it is $2,500 total, and you are having trouble with one daycare provider that is significant and impossible to resolve, you can switch a new provider and likely not worry about the reimbursement. Since the FSA only remiburses $2,500 per year, and daycare is often $1,000 per child per month, then you can just request reimbursement from the new place. Surely you will spend way over $2,500 at the new place. You can also use the new place in claiming any dependent care credit on form 2441.

Can they get the EIN from some other user of the facility? And use the checks as evidence of payment?

I went back to the OP to find out. Here's the issue as originally stated:

"The daycare provider is refusing to issue receipts for services already rendered and paid for and is refusing to say what their EIN is.

This refusal is preventing my friend from getting reimbursement from her FSA provider, which insists on seeing an receipt with the dependent's name, amount paid, and dates of service the receipt covers."

Nobody has suggested anything in tax law that will resolve the problem. It seems to me that if the provider can't be convinced/cajoled/threatened into coughing up the receipt the recourse is a suit to recover the money that otherwise would have been paid by the FSA.

Phil Marti VITA/TCE Volunteer Clarksburg, MD