You can choose to enroll in one or both accounts.*
Medical care flexible spending account (FSA)
Child care flexible spending account (FSA)
Important: If you want to take advantage of the pretax savings of an FSA for medical or childcareexpenses, you need to sign up every year during open enrollment (re-enrollment is not automatic!)
Enrolling in an FSA? Check out the information below to decide your 2026 contribution level.
*if you enroll in HSA health coverage, a medical care FSA is built into the plan; you can also choose to enroll in a child care FSA.
Check out Benefair to get answers from providers and Cornell benefits experts.
Register for an online presentation about Flexible Spending Accounts on Tuesday, October 21, 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm. Webinar recording will be posted here.
Plan Details:
2026 Contribution Levels
Medical care FSA: $3,400
If you and your spouse each have a health care FSA, you can each contribute up to $3,400.
The annual limit for FSA medical per employee is $3,400. This does not include any rollover dollars from the previous year.
Dependent care FSA: $7,500
If you and your spouse each have a dependent care FSA, you are limited to $7,500 between the two of you. If you're married and filing taxes separately, your contribution limit is $3,750.
Health Savings Account HSA: $3,400 (individual)
(only for members of the Aetna Health Savings Account Plan)
If you're in an HSA, Cornell contributes $1,000 each year into your spending account.
This means that if you're covered as an individual, you can contribute up to $3,400; the maximum contribution including Cornell's contribution is $4,400. Families can contribute up to $7,750 -- the maximum contribution including Cornell's contribution is $8,750.
If you're age 55 or older, you can contribute an additional $1,000.
Eligible Expenses
Visit these convenient resource pages on the Inspira website to learn more about how FSAs work and what expenses are eligible or ineligible:
You should assess your needs carefully for both the medical care and dependent care flexible spending accounts and take advantage of all the tax savings you can reasonably estimate.
For the plan year 2026, up to $660 of unused money in your 2025 medical care FSA account will be rolled over into your 2026 account to be used for eligible medical expenses.
The $660 rollover does not offset the 2026 election amount available. The rollover does not apply to the FSA dependent care account.
The IRS allows Cornell to extend the time that flexible spending dependent care account participants can incur and submit claims for reimbursement. For example, if your 2026 dependent care annual amount is $5,000, you have until March 15, 2027 to incur additional expenses that can be used for reimbursement against your 2026 annual amount.
You need to submit 2025 account claims for reimbursement by April 30, 2026, otherwise the “use-it-or-lose-it” rule comes into effect and you will lose the unused funds. It is important that you submit 2025 claims prior to submitting 2026 claims so that your remaining 2025 monies will be exhausted prior to your 2026 monies being used.
