When TASC Looked at Their Own DCFSA Numbers, They Found What We've Been Saying
On March 4, TASC published an internal assessment titled When Eligibility Isn't the Problem, looking at why so many of their own employees with DCFSA-eligible children were not enrolling in the benefit. It is one of the most honest pieces of industry research I have read in years, and the findings line up almost exactly with what SitterSync has been telling consultants, TPAs, and employers for the past two years. Worth a read in full: the full report is on tasconline.com.
The Headline Number
TASC identified 91 employees who had children under age 13, were eligible for a Dependent Care FSA, and chose not to enroll for the plan year. The instinct is to assume those 91 employees did not need the benefit. The data said otherwise.
53 of the 91 employees reported they did have arranged dependent care. They were paying for it, in cash or check or Venmo or to a relative, just not running it through the DCFSA. Of those 53:
39 relied on unpaid or informal caregivers, often grandparents or free after-school programs
7 paid for care but were not using either TASC's DCFSA or a spouse's
4 used a spouse's employer-sponsored DCFSA
3 had cash-based arrangements they did not think qualified
That 39-employee group is the one I want to focus on. It is the largest. And it is the group SitterSync was built for.
The "It Doesn't Feel Like a Real Benefit" Problem
The TASC report names it directly: "In each case, employees did not initially view these arrangements as relevant to dependent care benefits, even when policies and performance expectations still applied."
This is the structural failure mode of the DCFSA. The IRS rule is simple. If you pay someone to care for your child under 13 while you work, that payment is eligible. Grandparents getting Venmo'd $300 a month qualify. The teenager next door who watches the kids on Wednesdays qualifies. The neighbor's mom who picks up your kid from school and watches them until 6 qualifies.
Most employees do not realize any of that. They think DCFSA means daycare receipts only. So they look at their actual care arrangement, decide it does not count, and never enroll. The benefit fails not because it lacks value, but because employees self-disqualify based on a misconception that goes uncorrected.
The Result of TASC's Outreach
TASC's HR team did not redesign the plan. They did not add an incentive. They did exactly what we have been telling clients to do: they had conversations. One-on-one, exploratory, asking employees what their actual care arrangement looked like and walking them through whether it qualified.
The result, in their own words: approximately $41,500 in additional annual pre-tax deductions, roughly $14,500 in increased employee take-home pay, and approximately $3,000 in employer payroll tax savings. From one round of conversations. No plan changes.
If you scale that to a 500-person employer with similar demographics, you are talking about meaningful FICA returns and a measurable improvement in employee financial wellness, generated entirely by closing an education gap.
Remote Work Is Quietly Suppressing Participation
One finding in the TASC report that does not get enough attention: remote and hybrid work are masking formal care needs. Employees working from home normalize informal childcare arrangements that they would have formalized (and paid for, and run through DCFSA) if they were going to an office. They self-classify themselves as not needing care, even when they clearly are managing care during work hours.
That has a participation implication every benefits consultant should be tracking. As remote work entrenches, DCFSA participation rates may drift down structurally, not because the underlying need shrank but because the perception of need shifted. Employers who want to keep DCFSA participation healthy need to actively counter that drift with comms and policy clarity.
What This Means for SitterSync's Pitch
The TASC report validates the three pieces of our positioning that consultants and TPAs have been most skeptical about.
1. The biggest DCFSA participation gap is informal care, not daycare. 39 of TASC's 91 non-enrolled employees were paying or relying on informal caregivers. That is the babysitter, the grandparent, the after-school sitter. SitterSync exists specifically to make that informal care visible, eligible, and easy to substantiate.
2. Education alone moves the needle, but it has to be active. Static benefit guides and open-enrollment emails do not work. One-on-one conversations do. SitterSync's in-app eligibility surfacing, our Decoder tool, and our partner-led member outreach are designed to do at scale what TASC's HR team did manually for 91 people.
3. DCFSA is not a once-a-year decision. Care needs change mid-year. Schools change schedules. Summer happens. SitterSync members get year-round visibility into their balance and a one-tap path to spend it on the babysitter they already use. That is the year-round connection point the TASC report identified as missing.
Credit Where Credit Is Due
TASC did not have to publish this. Most TPAs would not. The instinct in this industry is to defend participation numbers, not to dissect them. By going public with what their own employee data showed, TASC made the case for every TPA, employer, and consultant in the country to do the same exercise.
I hope they do. And I hope the next time a benefits team looks at their DCFSA participation rate and assumes it is fine, they remember the 39 employees at TASC who were paying for childcare every month and quietly missing the benefit that was sitting right in front of them.
Try the Decoder
If you want to see the SitterSync version of TASC's one-on-one conversation at scale, the DCFSA Decoder walks an employee through a 90-second assessment and lands on a recommended election based on what they are already paying. It is the tool we wish every benefits team had during open enrollment.