Companies with 50 to 99 workers won’t be required to offer health insurance to workers until 2016, the IRS and the Treasury Department announced in the latest Affordable Care Act delay.
Businesses with 100 workers or more, however, will still need to meet the employer mandate next year. Companies with fewer than 50 workers aren’t required to offer health care coverage to employees.
While the mandate is delayed a year for the midsize companies, they will still have to file a report on how many employees they have and the kind of health plan they offer, if any. The federal government estimates that 2 percent of U.S. employers are in the 50 to 99 category.
The government also announced plans to streamline the reporting process for companies that do fall under the employer mandate.
“While about 96 percent of employers are not subject to the employer responsibility provision, for those employers that are, we will continue to make the compliance process simpler and easier to navigate,” said Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy Mark J. Mazur.
“Today’s final regulations phase in the standards to ensure that larger employers either offer quality, affordable coverage or make an employer responsibility payment starting in 2015 to help offset the cost to taxpayers of coverage or subsidies to their employees.”