Section 125 preventive care programs · Employers nationwide
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Boost Benefits is partnered with EHP Inc. to bring its Section 125 preventive care program to mid‑market employers. EHP provides the plan, the coverage, and the care; we do the work on your side of it. Your total compensation cost does not change. A defined portion of cash wages converts into a qualified pre-tax benefit election — and the employer FICA that had been running on that portion stops.
| Payroll line | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Gross annual compensation | 62,000 | 62,000 |
| Pre-tax benefit election | — | (1,800) |
| FICA wage base | 62,000 | 60,200 |
| Employer FICA at 7.65% | 4,743 | 4,605 |
| Employer payroll tax saved | — | 138 |
Uses 2026 federal rates for one employee below the $184,500 Social Security wage base. Gross compensation is unchanged. The employee’s taxable wages fall by the same $1,800, reducing their withholding and FICA share as well. Your figures depend on plan design, election amounts, wage levels, and participation. Illustration only, not a projection.
Boost your savings.
Where we fit
Three jobs, in order.
01 — First
Tell you whether it is worth doing
We model your actual census and payroll register before a single document is drafted. Some workforces produce a result that justifies the effort. Some do not, and we say so. A feasibility analysis that always comes back yes is a sales tool, not an analysis.
02 — Then
Stand the plan up correctly
Written plan documents adopted on time, election mechanics that hold up, payroll codes tested with your provider before the first live cycle, and enrollment run as a communications project rather than a form drop.
03 — Ongoing
Keep the payroll side running
Election changes, new hires and terminations, and the coding that has to stay right every cycle. The plan documents, the nondiscrimination testing, and the substantiation records sit with EHP and with your own tax counsel — we will tell you what they need and when, but we do not hold that file and we will not pretend to.
How it works
What actually happens, in four steps.
The employer adopts the plan documents
A cafeteria plan must exist in writing before it can do anything — IRC §125(d)(1). Alongside it sits the preventive care benefit program and, where the design calls for one, a self-insured medical reimbursement plan within the meaning of IRC §105(h)(6), which carries its own eligibility and benefits testing under §105(h). EHP supplies the plan architecture. We handle adoption and coordinate with your counsel and your payroll provider.
Employees elect before the plan year begins
Elections are made prospectively and are irrevocable for the plan year absent a change in status permitted under Treas. Reg. §1.125‑4. This is the step where these programs succeed or fail. An employee who does not understand what they elected is an employee who complains in March.
Payroll stops treating the elected amount as wages
The exclusion is derivative, not automatic: an amount elected under a Section 125 plan is outside the FICA wage base only if the benefit it buys is itself excludable — under IRC §106 for accident and health coverage, or §105(b) for reimbursement of incurred medical expenses. IRC §3121(a)(5)(G). For 2026 the combined employer rate is 7.65%: 6.20% Social Security on wages up to $184,500, plus 1.45% Medicare with no cap. The employee’s matching 7.65%, and federal and, in most states, state income tax withholding, apply to the same reduced base.
Participants receive the benefit
Through EHP, participating employees get virtual primary and urgent care, mental health care, mail‑order and retail pharmacy, weight‑health support, and a wellness platform, with no copays or deductibles at the point of care — plus dental, vision, accident, critical illness, hospital indemnity, and life coverage depending on the package selected. The program sits alongside your major medical plan. It does not replace it.
Annual savings
What it is worth, per year.
There is only one lever, so this is arithmetic rather than opinion. A properly made election leaves the FICA wage base; the employer’s 7.65% and the employee’s own marginal rates come off the same amount. Everything else is detail.
Per participating employee, per year
| Monthly election | Per year | Employer FICA at 7.65% |
Employee tax at 23.90% |
Combined |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $100 | $1,200 | $92 | $287 | $379 |
| $150 | $1,800 | $138 | $430 | $568 |
| $200 | $2,400 | $184 | $574 | $758 |
| $250 | $3,000 | $230 | $717 | $947 |
Reference case · $150 monthly election
$138to the employer
$430to the employee
per participating employee, per year. The two add to $568 of combined tax reduction, but they land in two different pockets and only the first reaches your income statement. We will not quote you the total as an employer saving.
We model modest elections on purpose. A larger election produces a larger number on a proposal and a larger deduction on a paycheck, and the second one is what your employees will call you about. We would rather quote low and land above it.
What the employer books, at scale
| Monthly election | 25 employees | 50 employees | 100 employees | 250 employees |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $100 | $2,295 | $4,590 | $9,180 | $22,950 |
| $150 | $3,443 | $6,885 | $13,770 | $34,425 |
| $200 | $4,590 | $9,180 | $18,360 | $45,900 |
| $250 | $5,738 | $11,475 | $22,950 | $57,375 |
What one paycheck looks like
| Monthly line | Before | With the election |
|---|---|---|
| Gross pay | $5,166.67 | $5,166.67 |
| Pre‑tax election | – | ($150.00) |
| Taxable wages | $5,166.67 | $5,016.67 |
| Employee FICA at 7.65% | $395.25 | $383.78 |
| Federal withholding at 12% | $620.00 | $602.00 |
| Michigan at 4.25% | $219.58 | $213.21 |
| Total withheld | $1,234.83 | $1,198.99 |
| Take‑home cash | $3,931.84 | $3,817.68 |
Two numbers move, and they move in opposite directions. Tax withheld falls $35.84 a month, which is the $430 a year in the table above. Take‑home cash falls $114.16 a month, because the $150 election is still withheld from the paycheck: the employee has exchanged cash for the benefit, and the tax saving is the discount on that exchange. If you have been shown a version of this illustration in which take‑home pay rises, it assumes the employee also receives a reimbursement in the same month at or near the elected amount. Whether such a reimbursement is excludable from income turns on whether the employee actually incurred a qualifying unreimbursed medical expense, which is the question the Service addressed in CCA 202323006. We do not model a reimbursement leg, and we would want your accountant to look at any proposal that does.
Illustrations, not projections. Every figure is the product of the stated inputs and nothing else. The 23.90% employee rate is 7.65% FICA plus a 12% federal marginal rate plus Michigan’s 4.25%, for a single filer earning about $62,000 in 2026 taking the standard deduction; an employee in the 22% federal bracket saves more, and rates vary by state, filing status, and income. Assumes 2026 federal rates, full‑year participation, and wages below the $184,500 Social Security wage base. Assumes no reduction in federal or state unemployment tax and no reduction in workers’ compensation premium. Employee savings accrue to the employee, not the employer, and the elected amount is still withheld from the employee’s pay. Your result will differ. See the fine print below.
plug in your own census and this table becomes yours
No average appears anywhere above, because we do not have your census. Send one and we will replace every figure with yours.
Our position
Where the savings come from, and where they do not.
| Item | Tax treatment | What we will say to you |
|---|---|---|
| Employer FICA on the elected amount | Outside the FICA wage base under IRC §3121(a)(5)(G), but only where the election is properly made under a written plan and the benefit purchased is itself excludable under §106 or §105(b). | We model it and we stand behind it. |
| Employee FICA and income tax on the elected amount | Same exclusion. The employee’s taxable wages fall by the elected amount, reducing both withholding and the employee’s FICA share. | We model it and we stand behind it. |
| Reimbursement of substantiated medical expenses | Excludable under IRC §105(b) only to the extent it reimburses expenses actually incurred for medical care as defined in IRC §213(d). | Substantiation is the whole ballgame. Confirm in writing who is capturing it before you enroll anyone. |
| Cash or fixed “wellness” payments not tied to incurred expenses | Includible in gross income and treated as wages. Three Chief Counsel memoranda say so — CCA 201622031, CCA 201703013, CCA 202323006 — and Rev. Rul. 2002‑3 reaches the related case of reimbursing the salary reduction itself. | We do not build savings projections on it, and we will tell you when a competing proposal depends on it. |
| Workers’ compensation premium | Under NCCI Basic Manual Rule 2‑B‑1, employee‑authorized Section 125 salary reductions are included in payroll for premium purposes in most states. | We do not promise workers’ compensation savings. A proposal quoting a percentage reduction here deserves a hard look. |
| The claim that the ACA created this | Section 125 was enacted in 1978. Sections 105 and 106 are older still. The Affordable Care Act did not create the pre‑tax mechanism these programs rely on. | We describe the actual authority, because the actual authority is what survives an examination. |
Two things follow from that table.
The benefit is bounded. Its size is set by how much compensation legitimately converts into qualified coverage and substantiated medical reimbursement — not by whatever figure produces the most attractive proposal. When a vendor shows you a per‑employee savings number, ask what election amount it assumes and work backward. The arithmetic is not hard, and it is revealing.
An employee who does not use the plan will take home less. We put that in the enrollment materials in those words. An employee who learns it from a pay stub becomes your problem, not ours.
How to check any vendor’s number
First ask which pocket. Then divide.
A quoted savings figure means nothing until you know whose tax it is. Ask the vendor to say plainly whether the number is employer payroll tax alone or a combined employer-and-employee total, then divide by the matching rate to recover the election it assumes: 7.65% for an employer-only figure, the combined rate for a combined one.
Our own reference figure is a combined one and we label it as such: $568, of which $138 is the employer’s. Divided the wrong way it would imply an election four times the real one. That is precisely the confusion this question removes.
| Quoted employer savings per employee | Implied annual election | Implied monthly election |
|---|---|---|
| $630 | $8,235 | $686 |
| $1,100 | $14,379 | $1,198 |
| $1,102 | $14,405 | $1,200 |
Then ask the second question: what is the employee receiving back, and is it tied to medical expenses they actually incurred and substantiated?
It is worth knowing what the disallowed structure looked like. In the arrangement addressed by CCA 202323006, employees paid a fixed-indemnity premium of roughly $1,200 per month pre-tax and received monthly wellness indemnity payments back for completing wellness activities, without regard to whether any medical expense had been incurred. At 7.65%, a $1,200 monthly election produces $1,101.60 of annual employer savings — the bottom row above.
One caveat, stated against our own argument: Chief Counsel advice is not precedent and may not be cited as such — IRC §6110(k)(3). It tells you the position the Service takes on examination, which is what matters commercially, but it is not a holding.
We are not suggesting that every proposal quoting a figure near that number is defective. We are saying the number tells you the election, the election tells you what has to come back, and what comes back is the only question that matters. Ask it before you sign, not after a notice arrives.
For employers
What you get, and what it rests on.
- Payroll tax reduction
- Proportional to participation and to election amounts. Reported to you as a range with the assumptions attached, never as a single headline figure.
- A benefit worth naming in a job posting
- Same‑week virtual care, therapy, and no‑copay generic pharmacy are concrete things a candidate can evaluate. Most of your competitors are offering a deductible.
- No disruption to your major medical plan
- Your carrier, network, and renewal cycle are untouched. The program is additive.
- Administration we carry
- Enrollment, payroll coordination, and reporting. Member support runs through EHP rather than through us or through you. Your HR team’s obligation is a census, a payroll register, and access to your payroll system.
- Clarity about who holds what
- The plan documents, the nondiscrimination testing under IRC §125(b) and §105(h), and the substantiation records are EHP’s and your own advisers’. We hold the census, the election records we collect, and the payroll coding. Knowing which is which before an examiner asks is worth more than a vendor claiming to own all of it.
Who is eligible
Test 01
A W‑2 employee
Contractors are out. So, as a matter of law rather than plan design, are partners in a partnership and more‑than‑2% S corporation shareholders, who are treated as self‑employed and cannot participate in a cafeteria plan. Owner participation is worth settling early.
Test 02
Enrolled in qualifying major medical
The program is built to sit alongside an ACA‑compliant medical plan rather than to substitute for one. An employee without that coverage is not eligible for this.
Test 03
Full time, thirty hours or more
Part‑time and seasonal staff fall outside it. This is the test that usually moves the number, because the participating population is smaller than the headcount on your census.
EHP sets these three tests and we apply them. They are eligibility conditions for the program, not a legal opinion about your workforce: how the nondiscrimination rules under IRC §125(b) and §105(h) apply to your particular group of highly compensated or key employees is a question for your own counsel and accountant.
For employees
Care people will actually use.
Every service below is furnished by EHP Inc. and its carriers and provider networks. Boost Benefits does not provide care, does not employ clinicians, and does not adjudicate a claim. We handle the employer side: the analysis, the enrollment, and the payroll treatment.
- Primary care
- Virtual visits scheduled within one to three days, weekdays, with the same provider each time, and an annual wellness visit that produces a written plan. EHP reports its primary care physicians are U.S.‑trained and board certified. Available for children ages two and up.
- Urgent care
- Available around the clock, nationwide. EHP reports more than 90% of consultations beginning within ten minutes. In-person referrals when a screen is not enough.
- Mental health
- Therapy with a master’s‑level clinician, appointments in one to three days, the same therapist each visit, for adults and covered adolescents twelve and up. Confidential. EHP reports 88% of members attend their first session, against 30 to 40% for a traditional employee assistance program.
- Pharmacy
- EHP reports more than 1,000 commonly prescribed maintenance generics by mail with no copay and unmarked packaging, plus retail pickup for 70-plus urgent-care medications at more than 70,000 pharmacies. Read the limits before you describe it as free: Revive states twelve free shipments a year and $7.99 a shipment after that, retail urgent-care medications capped at $250 per person a year, and that the pharmacy program is not insurance.
- Weight health
- Coaching, digital fitness and meal‑planning resources, and provider‑prescribed medication with home delivery for eligible members.
- Supplemental coverage
- Dental, vision, accident, critical illness, hospital indemnity, and life, depending on the package the employer selects.
Gross pay does not change. Taxable pay does. The value of this depends on using the care — and we say so at enrollment.
Partnered with EHP
EHP provides the plan. We bring it to employers.
We are partnered with EHP, and it is worth being exact about what that means. This is EHP’s program: EHP provides the plan, the coverage, and the clinical network. Boost Benefits acts on EHP’s behalf in bringing it to employers and is compensated in connection with it. We put that at the top of this section rather than in the fine print, because you are entitled to know whose product you are buying and how we are paid before you engage us. The reasons we work with EHP rather than assembling a plan ourselves are worth setting out too.
What EHP brings
- A plan already built and running
- EHP supplies the plan architecture, the documents, the benefit design, the medication formulary, and the administration behind them. This is the part that matters most and gets noticed least: the tax result in these programs turns on documentation, and documentation is precisely where arrangements assembled from templates come apart. We are adopting a structure already in service rather than drafting one at your expense.
- Care built to be used, not just offered
- The employee half of this only works if people actually use the benefit. Appointments within one to three days, the same provider each visit, no copays or deductibles at the point of care, and generic medications delivered to the door are utilization features rather than brochure features. A benefit nobody uses is a salary reduction and nothing else — which is why we weigh a program on how easy the care is to reach, not on the length of the coverage list.
- One member experience across states
- EHP reports clinical delivery nationwide, which keeps a multi‑state census from fragmenting into different networks and different answers by location. Supplemental coverages are offered without health underwriting, so no employee is declined for their history and the census is not quietly cherry‑picked.
- Support that is not your HR team
- Members get a portal, a mobile application, and a concierge line staffed by EHP. Enrollment questions, scheduling, and prescription problems route there rather than to your benefits administrator. For a small HR function this is often the difference between a program that runs and one that quietly becomes somebody’s second job.
Who does what
The plan and the care
EHP Inc.
Jacksonville, Florida · formerly Essentials Health Plan, rebranded December 2024
- Plan architecture and documents
- Carrier and provider network relationships
- Member portal, mobile application, and concierge support
- Medication formulary and mail‑order fulfillment
- Clinical delivery nationwide, as reported by EHP
Your point of contact
BoostBenefits
Partnered with EHP · employer‑side work
- Feasibility modeling on your payroll data
- Payroll integration and coordination with your provider
- Enrollment and employee education
- The conversation when something goes wrong
A well‑designed plan nobody enrolls in saves nothing. A well‑run enrollment on thin documentation is a liability, not a benefit.
Getting started
Four weeks — and an honest answer in the first one.
Feasibility
You send a census and a payroll register. We model the range of outcomes for your actual workforce, show the assumptions behind every figure, and tell you if the answer is no. No documents are drafted and nothing is signed at this stage.
Documents and integration
Plan documents adopted, payroll codes established, and a parallel test cycle run with your payroll provider so the first live payroll is not the first time anyone sees the coding.
Enrollment
Group meetings, written materials in plain language, and one‑on‑one availability for anyone who wants it. Elections captured and documented before the plan year begins.
Go live and open the file
First payroll processed under the new coding, and EHP activates member accounts. We hand you and your counsel a clean record of the census, the elections we collected, and the payroll treatment, so the file your advisers keep starts complete.
Questions
The ones a CFO actually asks.
Does this replace our health insurance?
No. The program is additive and sits alongside your existing major medical plan. Your carrier, network, plan year, and renewal are unaffected. If a vendor tells you a preventive care program can substitute for major medical coverage, end the meeting.
What is the IRS’s position on programs like this?
Mixed, and worth understanding precisely. The pre‑tax mechanism itself is statutory and uncontroversial: Section 125 elections are excluded from FICA wages under IRC §3121(a)(5)(G), and reimbursements of actual medical expenses are excluded under IRC §105(b).
What the IRS has repeatedly rejected is the aggressive variant — paying employees fixed cash amounts for wellness participation, or reimbursing them for the salary they reduced, with no connection to medical expenses actually incurred. See Rev. Rul. 2002‑3, Rev. Rul. 2002‑80, CCA 201622031, CCA 201703013, and CCA 202323006. Two revenue rulings and three Chief Counsel memoranda on one narrow question is not a subtle signal, even though the memoranda are not precedential.
The line between the two is a documentation and substantiation question, and it is where we spend most of our time.
Will our employees’ take-home pay go down?
Gross pay does not change. Taxable pay does, which reduces withholding and the employee’s FICA share — but the election itself still comes out of the paycheck. Whether net pay lands roughly flat depends on the plan design and on whether the employee uses the benefit and substantiates qualifying expenses. An employee who never uses the plan will take home less.
We put that in the enrollment materials in those words. Any program promising a universal take‑home increase is either mispricing the benefit or relying on payments the IRS treats as wages.
What happens if we are examined?
You produce the file: executed plan documents with adoption dates, election records, nondiscrimination testing results, substantiation for reimbursements, and participation data. Be clear on where each piece lives before you need it. The plan documents and the substantiation records come from EHP; the testing and the tax positions belong with your own counsel and accountant; we hold the census, the elections we collected, and the payroll coding, and we hand those over the same day. We are not tax counsel and we do not represent you before the IRS.
Is the EHP coverage minimum essential coverage for Section 4980H purposes?
Ask us for the specific plan’s status in writing — meaning minimum essential coverage as defined in IRC §5000A(f), offered under an eligible employer-sponsored plan — and get your own counsel’s read, before relying on it for any purpose under §4980H. The answer depends on the package selected and on facts specific to your workforce. We will not answer that question casually in a marketing document, and you should be wary of anyone who does.
Do we have to offer it to everyone?
Practically, yes. IRC §125(b) does not forbid a discriminatory plan; it withdraws the exclusion from the people you were trying to benefit. If the plan discriminates in favor of highly compensated participants as to eligibility, or as to contributions and benefits, those participants must include the value in income, and key employees lose it under a separate test if more than 25% of aggregate qualified benefits go to them. A self-insured reimbursement plan is tested again under §105(h). Eligibility classes are therefore a design decision with consequences, and testing is annual rather than one-time. Have your own counsel or accountant run it; we will supply the census and election data it needs.
What does it cost us?
Nothing to us. Boost Benefits does not charge you a fee. The program itself has a cost and that cost is EHP’s: EHP prices it as part of the program, and we show it inside the modeled result so the cost and the benefit sit on the same page before you commit. We are compensated by EHP in connection with placing and servicing the program, not by you. That is disclosed here rather than in the fine print because it is a reason to have your own adviser read anything we recommend. The feasibility analysis carries no cost and no obligation.
Get started
Two ways to start.
Either one reaches the same place. Pick whichever suits how much you want to say up front.
Learn more
Send us your employee count and the states you operate in. Someone will contact you to talk it through and tell you what else we would need. Best if you have questions first, or you are not ready to hand over a census.
Get the arithmetic
Give us your census in one go and the first thing you hear back is the arithmetic for your own workforce, not a sales call. A few minutes, no cost, no obligation.
Your analysis
Send a census. Get an answer.
Within a week we will tell you whether a program is worth the effort for your workforce, and show you the arithmetic either way.
Office
125 E 3rd Street, Suite 100
Rochester, Michigan 48307
Fine print
No advice, no relationship
Boost Benefits provides employee benefits program design, enrollment, and administration services. It is not a law firm, an accounting firm, an insurance carrier, or a registered investment adviser. Nothing on this site is legal, tax, accounting, actuarial, or investment advice; nothing here is a tax opinion or a covered opinion; and no advisory, fiduciary, or attorney‑client relationship is created by reading this site, by submitting a census, or by contacting us. Boost Benefits does not represent clients before the Internal Revenue Service or any state taxing authority. Consult your own tax counsel and accountant before adopting any arrangement described here.
Figures are illustrations, not projections
Every dollar figure on this site is an arithmetic illustration computed from stated inputs. None is an average, an estimate of your result, a projection, a forecast, a guarantee, or a representation of results achieved by any client. Each assumes: 2026 federal rates; a combined employer FICA rate of 7.65%, being 6.20% Social Security on wages up to the $184,500 taxable maximum plus 1.45% Medicare with no cap; for employee-side and combined figures, a marginal rate of 23.90%, being 7.65% FICA plus a 12% federal bracket plus Michigan’s 4.25%, for a single filer earning approximately $62,000 in 2026 and taking the standard deduction; an employee whose wages remain below the Social Security taxable maximum for the full year; full-year participation with no mid-year election change; and an election properly made under a validly adopted written plan. Change any input and the figure changes — not proportionally, since the 6.20% component stops above the taxable maximum and marginal income tax rates step.
What is not included
No figure on this site assumes any reduction in federal unemployment tax. Although 26 U.S.C. §3306(b)(5)(G) parallels the FICA exclusion, FUTA applies only to the first $7,000 of an employee’s annual wages under §3306(b)(1), so the practical benefit is nil for most employees. No figure assumes any reduction in state unemployment tax; state taxable wage bases are generally low relative to typical wages, and treatment varies by state. No figure assumes any reduction in workers’ compensation premium; under NCCI Basic Manual Rule 2‑B‑1, employee‑authorized Section 125 salary reductions are included in payroll for premium purposes in most states, and independent‑bureau states may differ. The additional 0.9% Medicare tax on wages above $200,000, or $250,000 for joint filers, is an employee‑only tax and is excluded.
Indemnity-type benefits
Accident, critical illness, and hospital indemnity coverages pay fixed amounts on the occurrence of an event rather than reimbursing expenses actually incurred. Where premiums for such coverage are paid with pre-tax dollars through a cafeteria plan, benefit payments are generally includible in the employee’s gross income; this is the same analysis the Internal Revenue Service applied in CCA 201622031, CCA 201703013, and CCA 202323006. Whether any particular coverage in a selected package is funded pre-tax or post-tax is a plan-design decision, and you should obtain that answer in writing before enrolling employees.
Effects on employees
A salary reduction election reduces the employee’s taxable wages and therefore the employee’s withholding and FICA share, but the elected amount is still withheld from pay. Whether net pay lands approximately flat depends on the plan design and on whether the employee incurs and substantiates qualifying medical expenses. An employee who does not use the plan will take home less. Reducing wages subject to Social Security tax also reduces the earnings recorded for Social Security purposes, which may reduce an employee’s eventual retirement or disability benefit. Elections are generally irrevocable for the plan year absent a change in status permitted under Treas. Reg. §1.125‑4.
Conditions the result depends on
Any tax result depends on facts we cannot verify from a website: timely adoption of a written plan satisfying 26 U.S.C. §125(d)(1); prospective, documented elections; satisfaction of the nondiscrimination requirements of §125(b) on annual testing; correct payroll coding and reporting; actual participation; and, for any reimbursement claimed under §105(b), substantiation that the payment reimbursed expenses actually incurred for medical care within the meaning of §213(d). Failure at any of these points can render amounts includible in gross income and wages, with correction obligations extending to amended Forms W‑2 and 941 for open years.
An area of active IRS attention
The federal tax treatment of preventive care, wellness, and medical expense reimbursement arrangements has been addressed adversely by the Internal Revenue Service on multiple occasions, including Rev. Rul. 2002‑3, Rev. Rul. 2002‑80, CCA 201622031, CCA 201703013, and CCA 202323006. Arrangements that pay employees cash, or fixed amounts, without regard to medical expenses actually incurred have been treated as producing includible income and wages notwithstanding pre‑tax funding through a cafeteria plan. Descriptions of published guidance on this site are summaries provided for identification and are not a substitute for reading the guidance or obtaining advice on your own facts.
State variation
State income tax, unemployment tax, and workers’ compensation treatment of Section 125 salary reductions varies by jurisdiction, and some states do not conform to the federal treatment. Multi‑state employers should expect different results by state. Nothing here addresses local income taxes, paid‑leave contributions, or wage‑and‑hour consequences of a reduction in stated compensation.
Coverage and MEC status
The benefits described on this site are furnished through EHP Inc. and its carriers and provider networks, and are subject in all respects to the governing plan documents, certificates, formularies, and network availability, which control over any description here. Any insured components of the program are issued by licensed carriers and placed through EHP; Boost Benefits’ role is limited to feasibility analysis, enrollment support, and payroll coordination. The program is intended to sit alongside, and is not a substitute for, major medical coverage or minimum essential coverage. No representation is made that any package constitutes minimum essential coverage for purposes of 26 U.S.C. §4980H or any other provision; request that determination in writing and obtain your own counsel’s review before relying on it.
Relationship of the parties
Boost Benefits acts on behalf of EHP Inc. in presenting this program to employers. References on this site to being “partnered” with EHP describe a commercial collaboration and are not a representation that the two companies are partners or joint venturers in law. The plan, the coverage, the provider networks, and the clinical services described on this site are provided by EHP and its carriers and providers. Boost Benefits does not provide, underwrite, or insure them, and its authority is limited to what EHP has granted it in writing. The two companies are separate entities; neither is responsible for the obligations, acts, or omissions of the other except to the extent the law of agency provides. Boost Benefits is compensated in connection with the placement and servicing of this program, which you should weigh when considering anything it recommends, and which is a further reason to obtain your own tax and legal advice. EHP, EHP Inc., and Essentials Health Plan are marks of their respective owners and are used for identification only. References to third‑party publications, including analyses published by professional services firms, are for identification and do not imply any endorsement, affiliation, or review of this site by those firms.
Currency and changes
Rates, wage bases, statutory and regulatory references, and third‑party program descriptions are stated as of August 2026 and are subject to change without notice. Tax law, published guidance, insurance products, and provider networks change; this site is not updated continuously and may not reflect current law or current program terms. Boost Benefits disclaims any obligation to update it, and disclaims all warranties, express or implied, as to the accuracy or completeness of its contents.