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Entries by ACA Reporting Blog

We Can Help With 2015 (Prior Year) ACA Reporting

If you are in this position and need help, contact our support team.  We can help.

Recently some employers have began to receive IRS notices for not filing their 2015 ACA Forms (1094-B, 1095-B, 1094-C & 1095-C).

Recently the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has begun to mail out Notice letters to large employers all over the country who have not yet filed their 2015 Affordable Care Act Reporting. These letters are serving as a final effort to inform large employers of their need to file informational returns or face a steep penalty.

VIEW THE NOTICE HERE

Internal Revenue Code (IRC) Section 6056 requires employers […] Read more

Employee Benefit Brokers, ACA Reporting. Huge Prospecting Opportunity, OR Administrative Pitfall?

The Million Dollar Question most employee benefit brokers are considering currently is should our firm try to perform this ACA reporting via an in-house technology solution that we purchase, or recommend having our clients use an outside vendor.  The reality is that every operation is different, has different needs and have promised their clients different things.  Some brokers take a full service approach and look to take administrative burdens off of their clients.  Other brokers take a more consultative approach.  Neither avenue is ‘wrong’, but each works for different type of benefit broker operations.

Regardless of which option you choose, here […] Read more

What are the ACA Reporting Penalties?

When an Applicable Large Employer (ALE) fails to comply with their ACA reporting requirement, they will then be subject to various penalties.  These penalties apply both for not providing forms timely to employees as well as not filing timely to the IRS.

The penalties are as follows:

Did you fail to file a return, and on-time?  The penalty will be $250 for each return up to a maximum of $3,000,000.
Did you fail to provide your employees with their statements, and on-time?  The penalty will be $250 for each return up to a maximum of $3,000,000.

If there ever is intentional disregard of the […] Read more

Payroll Vendor Doing ACA Reporting … MUST be HIPAA Compliant

For payroll companies performing ACA reporting, we are increasingly finding that they forgot one very important detail … HIPAA and HITECH Compliance.

The reason most payroll companies forget about this detail is that they normally work with employee specific information regarding payroll records.  For payroll record specific information, HIPAA privacy rules have an exception that allow for the data to not be considered Protected Health Information (PHI).

When it comes to ACA Reporting however, there is no similar exception.

The information that is necessary to complete ACA reporting (list here)  contains employee Social Security Numbers that are connected with medical plan enrollment […] Read more

ACA Affordability Safe Harbors must work for Everyone in a Class …

The IRS regulations for ACA reporting require an employer to show that they offered the ‘right type of plan’ at the ‘right type of cost’ or else face penalties.  This means that an employer must have offered minimum essential coverage and minimum value coverage at a cost no greater than 9.5% of the employees household income.

Problem!  When you hired an employee you didn’t hire their whole household, so how are you to know what that number actually is?  To deal with this issue the IRS allows for employers to make assumptions on what the household income is for an employee. […] Read more

1095-C Code Calculator Released

 

The most confusing portion of the entire Affordable Care Act employer reporting comes to bear when considering the lines 14, 15 and 16 for form 1095-C.

There are nearly 100 various logic combinations to create the codes necessary for the IRS reporting to be completed correctly.  To assist employers and organizations in checking the validity of the logic of these lines 14, 15 and 16 of form 1095-C, we have created a calculator.

Here is how it works … Simply select the codes below for lines 14 and 16 below and then press ‘search’.  You will then see the full logic as to […] Read more

CPAs Performing ACA Reporting … Pay Attention to HIPAA Compliance

In working with CPAs across the county, we have found that the overwhelming majority have not been aware that in order to perform Affordable Care Act (ACA) reporting on forms 1095-B and 1095-B for their clients that they must be HIPAA Compliant.  The confusion is understandable, since this likely is the first time they have ever really dealt with Protected Health Information (PHI).  Employee benefit brokers typically work with PHI on a daily basis every day, and thus are familiar with the requirements, such as entering into a business associate agreement with your client.  However on the whole, we are […] Read more

ACA Reporting Delay: Impact On Individual Tax Filings

One of the most common questions we are receiving is regarding the impact to employees filing their own personal taxes now that there has been an extension of time allowing employers and organizations until the end of March 2016 to supply forms 1095-B and 1095-C to their employees.  The concern rises when employers consider how employees can complete their normal tax filings without being provided the forms showing their health coverage for the year.

The IRS recently released some guidance to assist us with understanding this topic.  In their guidance they have said, “Due to these [ACA reporting] extensions, some individual […] Read more

IRS Changes ACA Reporting Deadlines …

Today the IRS and Treasury Department released guidance extending some of the Affordable Care Act reporting guidelines.  Simply put, the extensions will allow for the following:

Employers will have an additional two months (until the end of March 2016) to provide employees with the forms 1095-B and 1095-C, and
Employers will have an additional three months to file with the IRS.  

New paper form filing deadline:  May 31st, 2016
New e-filing form filing deadline:  June 30th, 2016

To learn more you can see the actual guidance by clicking here.

[…] Read more

Is ACA Reporting More Payroll or Benefits Related?

A common question in the marketplace is ‘what exact information is necessary to complete the Affordable Care Act (ACA) reporting’, which is required for employers for the first time regarding the 2015 calendar year.  To assist, we have created a list below of the types of data necessary as well as who will likely have that information.  

Many employers and benefit brokers originally made the assumption that ACA reporting would best be performed as an additional function of a company’s payroll provider.  However, now as the time comes to actually perform the reporting they understand that ACA reporting requires much […] Read more

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