Employee Assistance Programs in Times of Need
December 23, 2024
Two new laws which took effect Jan. 1, 2025 will ease the Affordable Care Act annual tax reporting burden on health plan sponsors.
In a bipartisan effort, Congress recently passed the Employer Reporting Improvement Act and the Paperwork Burden Reduction Act, both of which outgoing President Biden signed into law.
The laws are aimed at making it easier for sponsors to comply with ACA requirements on Forms 1095-B and 1095-C, which provide information about health insurance coverage to workers and the Internal Revenue Service.
Both laws take effect immediately.
Forms explainer
Form 1095-C is issued by “applicable large employers” (ALEs) — those with 50 full-time or full-time-equivalent workers — to report the offer of health coverage, while Form 1095-B is issued by insurance providers, self-insured employers or small employers to report actual coverage.
Prior to 2025, plan sponsors were required to send these forms to all of their employees covered by their health plan by March 2. The due dates for transmitting the forms to the IRS are Feb. 28 (if filing on paper) and March 31 (if filing electronically).
Both forms help workers prove they comply with the ACA’s mandate that they carry health insurance and that an employer is complying with its obligations to provide coverage under the law.
What’s changing
There are four changes that benefit employers under the two new laws:
1. Forms upon request — Plan sponsors are no longer required to send Forms 1095-B and 1095-C to all full-time and covered employees. Instead, they will only be required to furnish them upon request from an employee.
Importantly, plan sponsors who want to go this route are required to notify their staff about their right to ask for a form.
2. Electronic forms — Starting this year, employers may furnish the forms to their employees electronically rather than on paper. The new law also makes it easier for employers to use a worker’s birth date instead of their Social Security number if the number is missing.
3. Reponse times to IRS letters — Another provision expands the time employers have to respond to a “employer shared responsibility payment” letter (Letter 226J) from the IRS, to 90 days from 30.
These demand letters are sent to employers if one or more full-time employees listed on the company’s Form 1095-C received a premium tax credit on his or her federal income tax return, meaning they secured insurance on an ACA exchange like healthcare.gov.
Employers have found it challenging to provide a response and a defense to the IRS within such a short window of 30 days. An additonal challenge has been that these letters are sent by U.S. mail, and it may take some time to reach the appropriate person in an organization after being received. Filing a response late can result in the employer being assessed a penalty when one isn’t warranted, in addition to further penalties.
4. Statute of limitations — One of the new laws imposes a statute of limitations for how far back the IRS can go to try to collect assessments for 1095-B and 1095-C reporting failures and mistakes. Prior to this, there was no statute of limitations.
The takeaway
The above changes will benefit plan sponsors by reducing the reporting burden as well as give them more time to respond if the IRS thinks an ALE failed to provide coverage as required by law.
Your HR department should be aware of these changes in order to take advantage of the them.
