Dan Macy
Employers will not have any reason to adjust their qualified transportation fringe benefit plans — not as a result of a major highway funding bill that recently became law, anyway. That bill, known as the Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century, or MAP-21, once had a transit benefit parity provision in it, which would have called for an increase in the dollar limit on the use of buses, trains and other forms of transit under QTFBs. The parity provision would have made the allowance for mass transit equal to that for qualified parking, which currently is about double the allowance for transit and vanpools. However, the parity provision was stripped from the conference draft before the bill, H.R. 4348, went to the Oval Office for signature.
Qualified parking remains the QTFB category with the highest dollar limit and therefore the greatest benefit to commuters who participate in a QTFB.
No similar proposals are making any ground in Congress, leaving the proposal all but dead. Rep. Earl Blumenauer, D.-Ore., introduced a bill May 11, called the Commuter Relief Act, which would impose a uniform benefit limit on all types of QTFBs. However, the bill, H.R. 1825, remains stuck in its original committee assignment.