If you feel like you are walking a tightrope when dealing with Affordable Care Act (ACA) reporting, then you aren’t alone. Businesses often struggle with data collection and reporting obligations. It’s tricky, there’s no doubting that. Even more so when data isn’t being managed and reviewed on a regular basis. One wrong step can lead to expensive penalties. Download this and follow these easy steps to confidently walk the line toward ACA compliance.
Does ACA Apply to You?
The first question every employer must ask is whether or not ACA applies to them. The answer isn’t hard to determine, but does require some investigation. As noted on the infographic , you must determine the number of employees you have, including full-time-equivalents (FTE). In addition, this isn’t a one-time calculation, but an annual calculation required by the IRS so that they know when to expect submissions.
If you are under the magic number of 50 FTE, but are self-insured, then you are still required to comply with ACA. Businesses that are teetering on the line with headcount or planning growth should pay close attention to FTE data on a regular basis and be prepared in the event that ACA obligations are triggered.
Best practice: Continuously monitor every employees hours of service including the number of hours they are available to the employer and paid on-the-job. Hours of service include things like jury duty, military deployment, FMLA or other leave of absences, vacation time, holidays and more.
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Here’s Your Monthly Checklist
Monitoring employee status is such an important part of monitoring ACA compliance. It’s so important that we’ve prepared a monthly checklist which is included on the and highlighted below:
- Identify employees that are full-time and eligible for insurance.
- Review any newly eligible employees.
- Test that your health insurance meets the ACA definition of Affordability. This requires calculating each employee’s self-only cost of coverage.
- Keep detailed records for every calculation and determination.
Best practice: The key is in the regular collection of data and record-keeping. It’s critical to monitor this information on a regular basis and be ready to respond to any exceptions at any time. Keeping good records and being able to access this information is important. This isn’t something to put on the back-burner.
Don’t Neglect the Annual ACA Reporting Obligations
The IRS will be expecting a 1095-C form for every full-time employee, or all those insured if you are self-insured. This form requires information such as whether each employee was offered health insurance, at what cost and of what quality. As you can imagine, completing these calculations and populating these forms can quickly grow into a time-consuming, tedious task.
You don’t need to hire more people, you just need to automate the entire process from start to finish with our solution. This powerful, proven solution for ACA delivers real-time reporting, reliable information and connects you with ACA experts that will keep you balanced. It integrates with any ERP or payroll system and provides everything you need to achieve ACA compliance. Contact for additional information or questions about ACA reporting.
