re: I.R.S. Bars Employers From Dumping Workers Into Health Exchanges

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I.R.S. Bars Employers From Dumping Workers Into Health Exchanges

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No it doesn't. If you have less than 50 employees you don't have to offer health insurance. What the IRS banned was that employers could not offer a tax free contribution to buy from the exchange.

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Many employers had thought they could shift health costs to the government by sending their employees to a health insurance exchange with a tax-free contribution of cash to help pay premiums, but the Obama administration has squelched the idea in a new ruling.

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If an employer wants to help employees buy insurance on their own, Mr. Condeluci said, it can give them higher pay, in the form of taxable wages. But in such cases, he said, the employer and the employee would owe payroll taxes on those wages, and the change could be viewed by workers as reducing a valuable benefit.

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On another note. Gibbs predicted that the employer mandate was dead.

LINK

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“I don’t think the employer mandate will go into effect. It’s a small part of the law. I think it will be one of the first things to go,”

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Wow...

So it's a tax grab. Pay the employee a higher taxable wage(that the employer now has to match the higher wage) then the employee has to purchase insurance with taxed income(that use to be pre-tax income)

Wow at all the money the govt just schemed out of the population. But businesses are the evil ones.

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So it's a tax grab.

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Yep.

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Wonder how this effects retirees? Isn't a large part of Detroit's bankruptcy plan is to shift the retirees into to Obamacare.

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Those people are screwed...

It will be shitty for me when the "cadillac plan" tax goes into effect in 2016. Basically since my company offers great insurance at a low cost, we will get screwed. I look for my monthly rate to double or triple in the next two years.

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So are they now saying, "If you have less than 50 employees and you're willing to provide them a subsidy rather than completely dropping them, were going to fine you.... So you might as well just go ahead and screw them over

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My understanding, which could be wrong, is that this will only apply if a company is subject to the mandate.

The rules do not invalidate the process/law of reimbursing for premiums. What this new rule says is that reimbursing for premiums does not qualify as coverage provided by an employer under the employer mandate scheme. A company can still do this and the employee can still get the premium reimbursements tax-free... however, it won't count as coverage for ACA.

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the only reason to to go the exchanges is if you need subsidies, so to answer your question: doubtful

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Sounds like double-dipping to me. The employeee gets the subsidy from the government and gets another tax-free subsidy from the employer.

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What date determines whether you are compliant with the HC law? Lets say you have a job with insurance until April 15th, two weeks after the deadline, and then you lose it and don't get insurance for the rest of the year... Are you fined?

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It is a monthly test. You have to have so many months of coverage (I believe 9) to avoid an individual penalty.

There are a number of hardship waivers. One of them is affordability. If you don't have a job... then health insurance would be unaffordable, as the affordability waiver looks at your income.

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There are a number of hardship waivers.

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To answer the OP's question losing a job that offered insurance would be a hardship. They would be able to sign up for ACA with in a certain time frame. 90 days comes to mind but it could be 30. If they do not get insurance during that time frame they could be taxed. Ahem, I mean fined.