Sickness & Injury Benefits

This section discusses many types of sickness and injury benefits including disability benefits and military and government disability pensions.

Disability Income

Generally, if you retire on disability, you must report your pension or annuity as income. There is a tax credit for people who are permanently and totally disabled. For information on this credit and the definition of permanent and total disability, see chapter 34.

Disability pensions. Generally, you must report as income any amount you receive for personal injury or sickness through an accident or health plan that is paid for by your employer. If both you and your employer pay for the plan, only the amount you receive that is due to your employer's payments is reported as income. However, certain payments may not be taxable to you. Your employer should be able to give you specific details about your pension plan and tell you the amount you paid for your disability pension. In addition to disability pensions and annuities, you may be receiving other payments for sickness and injury.

Cost paid by you. If you pay the entire cost of a health or accident insurance plan, do not include any amounts you receive from the plan for personal injury or sickness as income on your tax return. If your plan reimbursed you for medical expenses you deducted in an earlier year, you may have to include some, or all, of the reimbursement in your income. See Reimbursement in a later year in chapter 23.

Cafeteria plans. Generally, if you are covered by an accident or health insurance plan through a cafeteria plan, and the amount of the insurance premiums was not included in your income, you are not considered to have paid the premiums and you must include any benefits you receive in your income. If the amount of the premiums was included in your income, you are considered to have paid the premiums, and any benefits you receive are not taxable.

Accrued leave payment. If you retire on disability, any lump-sum payment you receive for accrued annual leave is a salary payment. The payment is not a disability payment. Include it in your income in the tax year you receive it.

Retirement and profit-sharing plans. If you receive payments from a retirement or profit-sharing plan that does not provide for disability retirement, do not treat the payments as a disability pension. The payments must be reported as a pension or annuity. For more information on pensions, see chapter 11.

How to report. If you retired on disability, you must include in income any disability pension you receive under a plan that is paid for by your employer. You must report your taxable disability payments as wages on line 7 of Form 1040 or Form 1040A, until you reach minimum retirement age. Minimum retirement age generally is the age at which you can first receive a pension or annuity if you are not disabled.

Beginning on the day after you reach minimum retirement age, payments you receive are taxable as a pension or annuity. Report the payments on lines 16a and 16b of Form 1040, or on lines 12a and 12b of Form 1040A. The rules for reporting pensions are explained in How To Report in chapter 11.

Military and Government Disability Pensions

Certain military and government disability pensions are not taxable.

You may be able to exclude from income amounts you receive as a pension, annuity, or similar allowance for personal injury or sickness resulting from active service in one of the following government services.

• The armed forces of any country.
• The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
• The Public Health Service.
• The Foreign Service.

Conditions for exclusion. Do not include the disability payments in your income if any of the following conditions apply.

1. You were entitled to receive a disability payment before September 25, 1975.
2. You were a member of a listed government service or its reserve component, or were under a binding written commitment to become a member, on September 24, 1975.
3. You receive the disability payments for a combat-related injury. This is a personal injury or sickness that:
1. Results directly from armed conflict,
2. Takes place while you are engaged in extra-hazardous service,
3. Takes place under conditions simulating war, including training exercises such as maneuvers, or
4. Is caused by an instrumentality of war.
4. You would be entitled to receive disability compensation from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) if you filed an application for it. Your exclusion under this condition is equal to the amount you would be entitled to receive from the VA.

Pension based on years of service. If you receive a disability pension based on years of service, you generally must include it in your income. But if it is a result of active service in one of the listed government services and one of the listed conditions applies, do not include in income the part of your pension that you would have received if the pension had been based on a percentage of disability. You must include the rest of your pension in your income.

Terrorist attack. Do not include in your income disability payments you receive for injuries resulting directly from a terrorist attack that occurs while you are a U.S. government employee performing official duties outside the United States. For your disability payments to be tax exempt, the Secretary of State must determine the attack was a terrorist attack.

VA disability benefits. Disability benefits you receive from the VA are not included in your income. If you are a military retiree and you receive disability benefits from other than the VA, do not include in your income the amount of disability benefits equal to the VA benefits to which you are entitled.

Retroactive VA determination. If you retire from the armed services based on years of service and are later given a retroactive service-connected disability rating by the VA, your retirement pay for the retroactive period is excluded from income up to the amount of VA disability benefits you would have been entitled to receive. You can claim a refund of any tax paid on the excludable amount (subject to the statute of limitations) by filing an amended return on Form 1040X for each previous year during the retroactive period.

If you receive a lump-sum disability severance payment and are later awarded VA disability benefits, do not include in your income the portion of the severance payment equal to the VA benefit you would have been entitled to receive in that same year. However, you must include in your income any lump-sum readjustment or other nondisability severance payment you received on release from active duty, even if you are later given a retroactive disability rating by the VA.

Long-Term Care Insurance Contracts

Long-term care insurance contracts are generally treated as accident and health insurance contracts. Amounts you receive from them (other than policyholder dividends or premium refunds) generally are excludable from income as amounts received for personal injury or sickness. To claim an exclusion for payments made on a per diem or other periodic basis under a long-term care insurance contract, you must file Form 8853 with your return.

A long-term care insurance contract is any insurance contract that only provides coverage for qualified long-term care services. The contract:

1. Must be guaranteed renewable,
2. Must not provide for a cash surrender value or other money that can be paid, assigned, pledged, or borrowed,
3. Must provide that refunds, other than refunds on the death of the insured or complete surrender or cancellation of the contract, and dividends under the contract may be used only to reduce future premiums or increase future benefits, and
4. Generally must not pay or reimburse expenses incurred for services or items that would be reimbursed under Medicare, except where Medicare is a secondary payer or the contract makes per diem or other periodic payments without regard to expenses.

Qualified long-term care services. Qualified long-term care services are:

1. Necessary diagnostic, preventive, therapeutic, curing, treating, mitigating, and rehabilitative services, and
2. Maintenance or personal care services required by a chronically ill individual as prescribed by a licensed health care practitioner.

Chronically ill individual. A chronically ill individual is one who has been certified as one of the following.

1. An individual who, for at least 90 days, is unable to perform at least two activities of daily living without substantial assistance due to loss of functional capacity. Activities of daily living are eating, toileting, transferring, bathing, dressing, and continence.
2. An individual who requires substantial supervision to be protected from threats to health and safety due to severe cognitive impairment.

The certification must have been made by a licensed health care practitioner within the previous 12 months.

Limit on exclusion. You can generally exclude from gross income up to $200 a day for 2001. The $200 is indexed for inflation. See Limit on exclusion, under Long-Term Care Insurance Contracts, under Sickness and Injury Benefits in Publication 525 for more information.

Workers' Compensation

Amounts you receive as workers' compensation for an occupational sickness or injury are fully exempt from tax if they are paid under a workers' compensation act or a statute in the nature of a workers' compensation act. The exemption also applies to your survivors. The exemption, however, does not apply to retirement plan benefits you receive based on your age, length of service, or prior contributions to the plan, even if you retired because of occupational sickness or injury.

If part of your workers' compensation reduces your social security or equivalent railroad retirement benefits received, that part is considered social security (or equivalent railroad retirement) benefits and may be taxable. For more information, see Publication 915, Social Security and Equivalent Railroad Retirement Benefits.

Return to work. If you return to work after qualifying for workers' compensation, payments you continue to receive while assigned to light duties are taxable. Report these payments as wages on line 7 of Form 1040 or Form 1040A, or on line 1 of Form 1040EZ.

Other Sickness and Injury Benefits

In addition to disability pensions and annuities, you may receive other payments for sickness or injury.

Railroad sick pay. Payments you receive as sick pay under the Railroad Unemployment Insurance Act are taxable and you must include them in your income. However, do not include them in your income if they are for an on-the-job injury.

If you received income because of a disability, see Disability Income, earlier.

Federal Employees' Compensation Act (FECA). Payments received under this Act for personal injury or sickness, including payments to beneficiaries in case of death, are not taxable. However, you are taxed on amounts you receive under this Act as continuation of pay for up to 45 days while a claim is being decided. Report this income on line 7 of Form 1040 or Form 1040A, or on line 1 of Form 1040EZ. Also, pay for sick leave while a claim is being processed is taxable and must be included in your income as wages.

You can deduct the amount you spend to buy back sick leave for an earlier year to be eligible for nontaxable FECA benefits for that period. It is a miscellaneous deduction subject to the 2% limit on Schedule A (Form 1040). If you buy back sick leave in the same year you use it, the amount reduces your taxable sick leave pay. Do not deduct it separately.

Other compensation. Many other amounts you receive as compensation for sickness or injury are not taxable. These include the following amounts.

• Compensatory damages you receive for physical injury or physical sickness, whether paid in a lump sum or in periodic payments.
• Benefits you receive under an accident or health insurance policy on which either you paid the premiums or your employer paid the premiums but you had to include them in your income.
• Disability benefits you receive for loss of income or earning capacity as a result of injuries under a no-fault car insurance policy.
• Compensation you receive for permanent loss or loss of use of a part or function of your body, or for your permanent disfigurement. This compensation must be based only on the injury and not on the period of your absence from work. These benefits are not taxable even if your employer pays for the accident and health plan that provides these benefits.

Reimbursement for medical care. A reimbursement for medical care is generally not taxable. However, this reimbursement may reduce your medical expense deduction. For more information, see chapter 23.

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