For many employers, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act barely affected the benefits they offer employees. They provided coverage before the law was enacted, and they have continued to do so since.
But even firms that did not make any big changes because of the law have lots of paperwork that they didn't used to have. In order to make sure that individuals who are receiving subsidies to purchase plans through the PPACA marketplace are not already covered by an employer, the federal government needs every employer to report the coverage status of its workers.
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"Nothing about Obamacare has changed the benefits that we are offering our people," Tom Carswell, the secretary and treasurer of Waco Inc., a national manufacturer based in Virginia, told the Richmond-Times Dispatch. "What it has done is it's added a tremendous amount of paperwork to what we're doing."
All large employers — no matter what, if any, level of health benefits they provide — must send individual reports to every employee who was full-time for at least one month during 2015 by Feb. 1, 2016. By the end of February, they must send those individual reports, along with a transmittal report, to the IRS.
In addition, any employer that provided minimum essential coverage to employees for at least one month of 2015 must send reports to the workers who were covered by Feb. 1 and the IRS by Feb. 29.
Employers who fail to report will be subject to fines. The penalty is $100 per violation, up to a maximum of $1.5 million a year. However, employers that report within 30 days of the deadline will only be fined $30 per violation. Those that file within five months of the deadline (by Aug. 1) will be fined $60 per violation.
In 2016, the penalties will increase to $250 per violation with a maximum of $3 million per year.
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