Tag: pay or play

Determining whether variable-hour employees are entitled to offer of health insurance

by Gesina (Ena) M. Seiler Beginning January 1, 2015, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) will require large employers (with 100 or more full-time and full-time equivalent, or FTE, employees–in 2016 it drops to 50 or more employees) to offer minimum essential health insurance coverage to at least 70 percent (increasing to 95 percent in 2016 […]

Risks of ACA avoidance strategies for employers

by Kara E. Shea Even though material aspects of Affordable Care Act (ACA ) compliance have been delayed, employers are still scrambling to understand and prepare for compliance with the new regulatory scheme. Early on, compliance has been something of a numbers game because the “play or pay” mandate is limited to employers with 50 […]

‘Play or pay’ and whistleblower protections under healthcare reform

by Timothy P. Brechtel and Ricardo X. Carlo As if you didn’t have enough to worry about as healthcare reform heads toward full implementation in 2014, the new whistleblower protection provisions of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) may present a trap for unsuspecting employers looking to cut costs by tweaking their workforces. Under ACA Section […]

IRS issues guidance on ACA’s ‘play or pay’ rules

by Michael Bindner The IRS has issued Notice 2012-58, which describes safe-harbor methods employers may use to determine which employees are “full-time” workers for purposes of the “shared responsibility” penalty of the Affordable Care Act (ACA), which is often referred to as Obamacare. Notice 2012-59, issued by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) and the […]

U.S. Supreme Court Building

Supreme Court Upholds Healthcare Reform Law

By Jessica Webb-Ayer The wait is over: The U.S. Supreme Court has decided that the massive healthcare reform law (also known as the Affordable Care Act, or ACA) enacted in March 2010 is constitutional. So what happened, and what does this mean for employers? Read the Supreme Court’s decision on Health Care Reform The most […]