FSA Calculator
FSA Calculator
2026 health & dependent care FSA limits, tax savings, and a use-it-or-lose-it forfeiture check.
2026 health & dependent care FSA limits, tax savings, and a use-it-or-lose-it forfeiture check.
We Are Calculator
Professional Financial Tools
8/25/2026
Tax savings = what a health FSA election saves you. DCAP = the separate dependent-care account. Right-size = avoid forfeiting unspent funds at year-end.
Capped automatically at the 2026 IRS limit of $3,400.
Set to 0 in states with no income tax or that don't allow the exclusion at the state level.
You keep 29.6% of every dollar you elect.
Your marginal rate is 22%.
FSA elections always run through payroll, so this saving applies automatically — unlike an HSA, there is no non-payroll path that would lose it.
Electing $2,000 really costs you this much in take-home pay.
Per employee, per employer. A working spouse with their own FSA has a separate limit.
Free financial calculators, verified against primary sources like the IRS, CFPB and Federal Reserve. No sign-up, and every calculation runs entirely in your browser — nothing you type is ever sent to us.
Picked based on what this calculator does
Contribution room, tax savings, and long-term growth for a Health Savings Account.
Open calculatorProject a 529 plan against future college costs.
Open calculatorCurrent value of Series EE and Series I savings bonds.
Open calculatorPopularEstimate tax on profits.
Open calculatorCheck your spending against the 50/30/20 needs/wants/savings rule.
Open calculatorSee your 2026 marginal and effective tax rates with bracket breakdown.
Open calculatorA Flexible Spending Account is a Section 125 cafeteria-plan benefit that lets you pay for eligible expenses with pre-tax salary. It sounds like a Health Savings Account, and the tax mechanics are similar, but the two accounts behave very differently in practice:
Because the forfeiture risk is the account's defining feature, this calculator's third mode exists specifically to help you avoid it — something most FSA "calculators" online skip entirely in favor of a bare limit lookup. All three modes run in your browser; nothing you type is sent to a server.
Set annually by the IRS for the health FSA, and by statute (not inflation indexing) for the dependent care FSA. Current figures, from Revenue Procedure 2025-32 and the One Big Beautiful Bill Act:
| Account | 2026 Limit | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Health FSA | $3,400 per employee | IRS Rev. Proc. 2025-32, up $100 from 2025 |
| Health FSA carryover (if plan offers it) | $680 | IRS Rev. Proc. 2025-32, up $20 from 2025 |
| Dependent Care FSA (DCAP) | $7,500 per household | One Big Beautiful Bill Act, up from $5,000 — first statutory increase since 1986 |
| DCAP, married filing separately | $3,750 | Half the joint limit — not modeled by this calculator's filing-status list |
The health FSA limit is per employee, not per household. A married couple who each have access to their own employer's FSA can each elect up to $3,400, for a combined $6,800 — unlike the dependent care FSA, which is one limit per household regardless of who earns it or how many employers are involved.
Employer contributions are generally not counted against the $3,400 limit, unlike an HSA where they are. The exception: if you could take the employer's contribution as cash instead, it's treated as your own salary reduction and does count.
The single most common FSA mistake is electing more than you'll actually spend. Employers are allowed — but not required — to offer one of two relief options:
Neither is guaranteed — check your plan documents. If your plan offers neither, anything left unspent on December 31 is simply gone; it does not roll back to your paycheck.
The "Right-Size My Election" mode exists to make this concrete: enter what you honestly expect to spend, compare it against the election you're considering, and see the forfeiture or out-of-pocket gap in dollars rather than guessing.
Enter your income, filing status, and the election you're considering. Unlike an HSA, FSA contributions only exist inside payroll — there's no "direct contribution" path to compare, so the FICA savings shown always apply.
A separate account with its own separate limit — you can max out both a health FSA and a DCAP in the same year. Set your election up to the $7,500 household cap.
Enter a conservative estimate of eligible expenses (copays, prescriptions, dental, vision, planned procedures), the election you're weighing, and whether your plan offers a carryover. The result shows whether you'd forfeit funds, pay out of pocket, or land in a well-matched range — plus the safe maximum you could elect given your carryover cushion.
See related tools: the HSA calculator for high-deductible-plan accounts, the ACA subsidy calculator for marketplace premium tax credits, and the federal income tax estimator for your full picture beyond payroll benefits.