Photo by Mr. T in DCAs Metro General Manager John Catoe alluded to recently in one of his weekly online chats, WMATA has decided to go ahead and delay implementing those confusing changes to SmartBenefits we’ve been hearing so much about, as iMetro reports (hat tip to GGW).
Last night at the budget forum, John Catoe addressed this issue. The conversion of the Smartbenefits program to the new IRS-compliant system has been delayed. An extra year was given for WMATA to come up with a better solution than what was proposed (the three purse system). So rest assured that the SmartBenefits system will remain in its current state at least through the year of 2010. Catoe informed us that this decision was reached on Tuesday, November 17th.
The change to the program that had been raising the most eyebrows was a provision that required unused benefits to be returned to the employer at the end of each month, regardless of whether the employee was contributing their own pre-tax salary to it. So, look for this to get worked out over the course of the next year.
