{"id":1214,"date":"2025-01-10T13:06:22","date_gmt":"2025-01-10T19:06:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.commuterconnections.org\/?p=1214"},"modified":"2025-01-13T15:52:45","modified_gmt":"2025-01-13T21:52:45","slug":"smartbenefits-benefit-both-employers-and-employees","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.commuterconnections.org\/enewsletter\/smartbenefits-benefit-both-employers-and-employees\/","title":{"rendered":"Smart Benefits for both Employers and Employees"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>SmartBenefits<sup>\u00ae<\/sup> is administered free by the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA), more commonly known as Metro, and is for the region\u2019s employers who provide a direct fare benefit. SmartBenefits<sup>\u00ae<\/sup>\u00a0is the best way to provide your employees with pre-tax transit fares, vanpool expenses, and parking at Metro stations. It is a win-win; employers save money on payroll taxes and employees do not pay taxes on the cost.<\/p>\n<p>In 2025, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) announced that employers can provide up to $325 in qualified transportation fringe benefits tax-free to employees using transit or qualified vanpools to get to and from work. This is an increase of $10 from the 2024 transit benefit amount.<\/p>\n<p>SmartBenefits<sup>\u00ae <\/sup>is Metro&#8217;s IRS-compliant commuter benefits program where employers can fund the benefit tax-free, up to the IRS limit. Employers can fund transit fares, or employees can pay the fare themselves through a tax-free payroll deduction. A combination of the two funding methods can be used as well.<\/p>\n<p>Signing up for the SmartBenefits<sup>\u00ae<\/sup> service is free for employers to administer, and the tax savings are undeniable. For more information, visit <a href=\"http:\/\/wmata.com\/business\/smartbenefits\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">SmartBenefits<sup>\u00ae<\/sup><\/a> .<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>SmartBenefits\u00ae is administered free by the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA), more commonly known as Metro, and is for the region\u2019s employers who provide a direct fare benefit. SmartBenefits\u00ae\u00a0is&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1215,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"wds_primary_category":1,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,5,27,25],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1214","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-commuter-benefits","8":"category-enewsletter","9":"category-smart-benefits","10":"category-wmata"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.commuterconnections.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.commuterconnections.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.commuterconnections.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.commuterconnections.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.commuterconnections.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.commuterconnections.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1214\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.commuterconnections.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.commuterconnections.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.commuterconnections.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.commuterconnections.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}