Form 8889: Health Savings Accounts (HSAs)

Form 8889 goes with your Form 1040, 1040-SR, or 1040-NR. You file it if any one of the four situations below fits you. If you or your spouse received HSA distributions in 2025, you file Form 8889 with your return even when you have no taxable income and no other reason to file a return at all.

• You, your employer, or someone else made contributions to your HSA
• Your HSA made a distribution
• You failed to be an eligible individual during a testing period and must recognize income
• You acquired an interest in an HSA because the account beneficiary died

You use Form 8889 with your 2025 income tax return and attach it to Form 1040, 1040-SR, or 1040-NR. Its attachment sequence number is 52. Contributions count for 2025 if you make them by the unextended deadline for filing that return, April 15, 2026. You can put money in your 2025 HSA through that date, or a later date if you were serving in or in support of the U.S. Armed Forces in a designated combat zone or contingency operation.

• Married filing jointly and both of you have HSAs: fill out a separate Form 8889 for each of you and attach both to a paper return
• Beneficiary of two or more HSAs, or of one HSA plus your own: fill out a separate Form 8889 for each, write statement at the top, then combine them on a controlling Form 8889

P.L. 119-21, dated July 4, 2025, amended Code section 223. An HSA eligible individual may now have disregarded coverage besides the HDHP for telehealth and other remote care. A plan also will not fail to count as an HDHP because it has no deductible for telehealth and other remote care services. Those changes apply to plan years beginning after 2024. For 2025, the contribution limit is $4,300 for self-only coverage and $8,550 for family coverage, with another $1,000 if you are age 55 or older at the end of your tax year.

• Notice 2024-75 adds over-the-counter oral contraceptives and male condoms to preventive care an HDHP can cover without a deductible
• Notice 2024-75 treats all types of breast cancer screening for people not diagnosed with breast cancer as preventive care
• Notice 2024-71 treats amounts paid for condoms as amounts paid for medical care

Part I figures your deduction. Check the self-only or family box on line 1, enter what you and others put in on line 2, then your limit on line 3. Employer contributions and qualified HSA funding distributions cut that limit down. Part II handles distributions, starting with the total from Form 1099-SA, box 1. Part III applies only if you stopped being an eligible individual during a testing period. Filing jointly with separate HSAs means a separate Part I, Part II, and Part III for each spouse.

• Fill out Form 8853, Archer MSAs and Long-Term Care Insurance Contracts, first if you need it
• An HDHP needs a minimum annual deductible of $1,650 for self-only coverage or $3,300 for family coverage
• Maximum annual out-of-pocket expenses are $8,300 for self-only coverage and $16,600 for family coverage
• Employer contributions should be shown on Form W-2, box 12, code W

Qualified medical expenses are unreimbursed medical expenses you could otherwise deduct on Schedule A (Form 1040), paid for you, your spouse, and your dependents. Nonprescription medicines other than insulin do not work for the Schedule A deduction, but they do count for HSA purposes. Menstrual care products count. So do amounts paid for condoms, personal protective equipment such as masks, hand sanitizer, and sanitizing wipes bought mainly to stop the spread of COVID-19, and home COVID-19 testing. Expenses you had before you set up your HSA are not qualified medical expenses.

• Insurance premiums count only for long-term care insurance, health care continuation coverage such as COBRA, coverage while you receive unemployment compensation, or Medicare and other coverage if you were 65 or older
• Medigap and other Medicare supplemental policy premiums do not count
• You cannot take a Schedule A (Form 1040) deduction for any amount you put on line 15

The last-month rule lets you treat yourself as an eligible individual for the whole year if you are one on the first day of the last month of your tax year, December 1 for most people. That puts you in a testing period. It begins with the last month of your tax year and ends on the last day of the 12th month after it, so December 1, 2025 through December 31, 2026. If you stop being eligible during that stretch for any reason other than death or becoming disabled, you report the extra contributions as income in Part III and owe a 10% additional tax.