A recent article in Bloomberg BNA's Health Insurance Report will be of interest: "ACA's Employer 'Pay or Play' Mandate Delayed - What Now for Employers?" by Frank C. Morris, Jr., and Adam C. Solander, colleagues of ours, based in Epstein Becker Green's Washington, DC, office. Following is an excerpt:
The past few weeks have changed the way that most employers will prepare for the employer ‘‘shared responsibility'' provisions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). Over the past year or so, employers have scrambled to understand their obligations with respect to the shared responsibility rules and implement system changes, oftentimes with imperfect information to guide their efforts to comply with ACA.
Understanding the difficulties that both employers and the health insurance exchanges or marketplaces would have, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) on July 2 issued a press release stating it would delay the shared responsibility provisions and certain other reporting requirements for one year, until Jan. 1, 2015.
On July 9, the IRS published Notice 2013-45 (Notice), providing additional information on the one-year delay. Specifically, the following three ACA requirements are delayed:
- The employer shared responsibility provisions under Section 4980H of the Internal Revenue Code (Code), otherwise known as the employer mandate;
- Information reporting requirements under Section 6056 of the Code, which are linked to the employer mandate; and
- Information reporting requirements under Section 6055 of the Code, which apply to self-insuring employers, insurers, and certain other providers of ‘‘minimum essential coverage,'' as defined by ACA.
The IRS notice clarifies that only the above three requirements are delayed. The notice does not affect the effective date or application of other ACA provisions, such as the premium tax credit or the individual mandate. Given the fact that the law itself is not delayed, the notice has raised significant issues for employers despite their being generally pleased with the mandate and penalty delay. This article will discuss the impact of the delay and some of the issues that employers should consider as a result of the delay.
Click here to download the full article in PDF format. The attached file is reproduced with permission from Health Insurance Report, 19 HPPR 28, 7/31/13. Copyright © 2013 by The Bureau of National Affairs, Inc. (800-372-1033) http://www.bna.com