Exception for highly compensated employees. You can't exclude dependent care assistance from the wages of a highly compensated employee unless the benefits provided under the program don't favor highly compensated employees and the program meets the requirements described in section 129(d) of the Internal Revenue Code. For this exclusion, a highly compensated employee for 2019 is an employee who meets either of the following tests. [list=1] The employee was a 5% owner at any time during the year or the preceding year. The employee received more than $120,000 in pay for the preceding year.
You can choose to ignore test (2) if the employee wasn't also in the top 20% of employees when ranked by pay for the preceding year. 看最后这句话，公司针对收入不到全公司收入前20%的员工可以选择不看$12000（2018年总收入）这条线。所以，很多有钱的大公司肯定有不少收入超过12万但仍能存5k的员工。 另外高收入员工的定义是看该员工前一年的收入，即2019年的limit是看2018年的总收入，2020年的limit是看2019年的总收入。 所以你家那位要么是公司股权超过5%，要么是收入进入公司前20%，或者公司payroll懒只看收入线
收入超线
IRS对高收入员工的定义2019版原文：
https://www.irs.gov/publications/p15b#en_US_2019_publink1000193665
Exception for highly compensated employees. You can't exclude dependent care assistance from the wages of a highly compensated employee unless the benefits provided under the program don't favor highly compensated employees and the program meets the requirements described in section 129(d) of the Internal Revenue Code. For this exclusion, a highly compensated employee for 2019 is an employee who meets either of the following tests. [list=1]
The employee was a 5% owner at any time during the year or the preceding year.
The employee received more than $120,000 in pay for the preceding year.
You can choose to ignore test (2) if the employee wasn't also in the top 20% of employees when ranked by pay for the preceding year.
看最后这句话，公司针对收入不到全公司收入前20%的员工可以选择不看$12000（2018年总收入）这条线。所以，很多有钱的大公司肯定有不少收入超过12万但仍能存5k的员工。 另外高收入员工的定义是看该员工前一年的收入，即2019年的limit是看2018年的总收入，2020年的limit是看2019年的总收入。
所以你家那位要么是公司股权超过5%，要么是收入进入公司前20%，或者公司payroll懒只看收入线