Still offering your group employee benefit plan? What's employer shared responsibility?

Interested in learning about employer shared responsibility? Accurate Insurance Solutions wants to provide a knowledge center for companies looking to stay ahead of the ongoing compliance issues faced by both large and small businesses in the Tampa area.

As an employee benefit consulting firm it is our job to know the laws, implement strategies, and provide up to the minute communication to our clients with changes to the ACA and HR issues.

As the employer shared responsibility penalties for large employers begin in 2015, employers must decide whether they will offer employer-sponsored health coverage that complies with the Affordable Care Act (ACA) or drop coverage and lose a valuable attraction and retention tool.

Likewise, small employers may also be debating the benefits of offering group coverage or having employees enroll in individual plans.

Today we take a look at the employer mandate. What is it? How will it affect my business?

Should I be worried about it this year, 2015? What are the penalties? What are the rules?

Employers must offer health insurance that is affordable and provides minimum value to their full-time employees and their children up to age 26 or be subject to penalties.

Known as the employer mandate, it applies to employers with 50 or more full time equivalents and it will be introduced during the 2015 and 2016 calendar year based on employer size.

An employee who works 30 or more hours a week is considered full-time.

Below is a flow chart identifying the penalties for employers not offering coverage under the affordable care act during 2015 and 2016.

Infographic provided by The Henry Kaiser Family Foundation

Employers who preempted the "pay or play" ruling by reducing staff created a strong buzz in 2013. In some cases employers reduced their full time staff to part-time which sole purpose was to decrease or eliminate the health coverage requirements.

What about employers who want to maintain the # of employees and grow their company, let’s take a look at a few of the ways those employers can be creative:

• Share employees within industries that have flexible hours and would have to be primarily close to one another (i.e., restaurants, bars, retail).

• Use temporary staffing agencies as an alternative to permanent hires, depending on the cost.

• Independent contractors who meet the IRS Independent Contractor classification.

• Manage use of the part-time, seasonal employee "safe harbor" rules that provide a look-back period of up to one year before mandatory health coverage is needed.

At Accurate Insurance Solutions we can design a system that provides weekly/monthly analysis of employee hours to determine which employees are considered full time and therefore, must be offered coverage to comply with the ACA.

We can also analyze your employee census information to compute full-time equivalent employees in order to determine Large Employer status.

We provide large and small group turnkey solutions visit our website to learn more, get an online quote, or set up an appointment today.

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