Internal Revenue Service Posts Draft Guidance on Affordable Care Act Employer Mandate.
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) last week posted draft instructions outlining how employers are supposed to comply with the Affordable Care Act employer mandate. As a reminder, employers with more than 100 full-time equivalent employees (30 hours or more) are required to provide health insurance to those employees by Jan. 1, 2015 or face fines. (Employers with 50 to 99 equivalent employees must provide insurance by Jan. 1, 2016 while employers with fewer than 50 full-time equivalent employees are exempt from the mandate.) The IRS reminds employers that the forms included with these draft instructions also have yet to be finalized, so are not the final forms employers will file next year. The draft instructions are merely an effort to prepare employers for what is to come. Please stay tuned to Connecting the Dots for more information as these forms are finalized.