My wife and I have contributed to a Health Savings Account (HSA) since 2018. We are big fans of HSAs due to the Triple Tax Advantage, and in most instances, we elect to pay for most of our qualified health expenses out-of-pocket so that we maximize the amount of money that we can invest to take advantage of tax-deferred, long-term growth. However, we recently realized that in order to capitalize on the third HSA tax advantage (Tax-Free Withdrawals), we would need to establish a record archiving process and environment to provide proof that our out-of-pocket reimbursements were valid. This proof is required to satisfy a potential IRS audit and avoid the 20% non-qualified withdrawal penalty.
We have digital-first approach for our record keeping and use Google Drive as our repository. Collecting the receipts for provider appointments and prescriptions was relatively straightforward as there is an Explanation of Benefits documented with our health care insurance account claim summary or some other type of billing statement for medical services provided. What is a bit more complicated to track down are itemized purchases of Flexible Spending Account (FSA) Eligible Expenses. Since we didn’t retain or digitally archive receipts for these purchases until recently, obtaining a reimbursement does not appear possible for a large number of such items. Once source of comfort is that online stores such as Amazon allow you to download your order history, so obtaining records of FSA Eligible Expenses appear to be within reach. While a PDF invoice is the required format for proof of purchase, navigating the order history aids in finding the desired order numbers corresponding to the qualified expenses, which can be used to view the invoice on the online store.
I plan to create a case study / tutorial that explores and demonstrates how one goes about converting Amazon Order History into actionable data that can be queried to yield only the purchase orders that contain FSA eligible data. It should also be noted that this order history will contain personally identifiable information such as shipping/billing addresses, payment methods, shopping habits and indicators of health conditions. Some additional work will be required to sanitize the data to make it safe for a public walkthrough while also keeping it useful.
