IRS Increases Affordability Percentage Under Employer Mandate for 2015

Starting in 2015, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) requires applicable large employers to offer affordable, minimum value health coverage to their full time employees (and dependents) or pay a penalty. The employer penalty rules are also known as the employer mandate or the “pay or play” rules.

 

Effective in 2014, affordability of health coverage is used to determine whether an individual is:

 

• Eligible for a premium tax credit for a health plan purchased through an Exchange; and
• Exempt from the penalty for not having minimum essential coverage

 

On July 24, 2014, the IRS released Revenue Procedure 2014-37 to index the ACA’s affordability percentages for 2015.

 

For plan years beginning in 2015, an applicable large employer’s health coverage will be considered affordable under the pay or play rules if the employee’s requires contribution to the plan does not exceed 9.56 percent of the employee’s household income for the year. The current affordability percentage for 2014 is 9.5 percent.

 

Applicable large employers can use one of the IRS’ affordability safe harbors to determine whether their health plans will satisfy the 9.56 percent requirement for 2015 plan years, if requirements for the applicable safe harbor are met.

 

This adjusted affordability percentage will also be used to determine whether an individual is eligible for a premium tax credit for 2015. Individuals who are eligible for employer-sponsored coverage that is affordable and provides minimum value are not eligible for a premium tax credit in the Exchange.

 

Also, Revenue Procedure 2014-37 adjusts the affordability percentage for the exemption from the individual mandate for individuals who lack access to affordable minimum essential coverage. For plan years beginning in 2015, coverage is unaffordable for purposes of the individual mandate if it exceeds 8.05 percent of household income.

 

Employer Mandate

The pay or play rules apply only to applicable large employers. An “applicable large employer” is an employer with, on average, at least 50 full-time employees (including full-time equivalents) during the preceding calendar year. Many applicable large employers will be subject to the pay or play rules starting in 2015. However, applicable large employers with fewer than 100 full-time employees may qualify for an additional year, until 2016, to comply with the employer mandate.

 

Affordability Determination

The affordability of health coverage is a key point in determining whether an applicable large employers will be subject to a penalty.

 

For 2014, the ACA provides that an employer’s health coverage is considered affordable if the employee’s required contribution to the plan does not exceed 9.5 percent of the employee’s household income for the taxable year. The ACA provides that, for plan year beginning after 2014, the IRS must adjust the affordability percentage to reflect the excess of the rate of premium growth over the rate of income growth for the preceding calendar year.

 

As noted above, the IRS has adjusted the affordability percentage for plan years beginning in 2015 to 9.56 percent. The affordability text applies only to the portion of the annual premiums for self-only coverage and does not include any additional cost for family coverage. Also, if an employer offers multiple health coverage options, the affordability test applies to the lowest-cost option that also satisfies the minimum value requirement.

 

Affordability Safe Harbors

Because an employer generally will not know an employee’s household income, the IRS created three affordability safe harbors that employers may use to determine affordability based on information that is available to them.

 

The affordability safe  harbors are all optional. An employer may choose to use one or more of the affordability safe harbors for all its employees or for any reasonable category of employees, provided it does so on a uniform and consistent basis for all employees in a category.

 

The affordability safe harbors are:

 

• Form W-2 safe harbor (affordability determined based on Form W-2 wages from that employer)
• The rate of pay safe harbor (affordability determined based on an employee’s rate of pay)
• The federal poverty line (FPL) safe harbor (affordability determined based on FPL for a single individual)

 

Individual Mandate

Beginning in 2014, the ACA requires most individuals to obtain acceptable health insurance coverage for themselves and their family members or pay a penalty. This rule is often referred to as the “individual mandate”. Individual may be eligible for an exemption from the penalty in certain circumstances.

 

Under the ACA, individuals who lack access to affordable minimum essential coverage are exempt from the individual mandate. For purposes of this exemption, coverage is considered affordable for an employee in 2014 if the required contribution for the lowest-cost, self-only coverage  does not exceed 8 percent of household income. For family members, coverage is considered affordable in 2014 if the required contribution for the lowest-cost family coverage does not exceed 8 percent of household income. This percentage will be adjusted annually after 2014.

 

For plan years beginning in 2015, the IRS has increased this percentage from 8 percent to 8.05 percent.

 

What You Need to Know about the Small Business Health Care Tax Credit

For tax years 2010 to 2013, the maximum credit is 35% of medical premiums paid for small business employers and 25% of medical premiums paid for small tax-exempt employers, such as charities.

 

For tax years beginning in 2014 or later, there are changes to the credit:

 

• The maximum credit increases to 50% of medical premiums paid for small business employers and 35% of medical premiums paid for small tax-exempt employers. 
• To be eligible for the credit, a small employer must pay medical premiums on behalf of employees enrolled in a qualified health plan offered through a Small Business Health Options Program (SHOP) Marketplace or qualify for an exception to this requirement.
• This credit is available to eligible employers for two consecutive taxable years.

 

 

Here’s what this means for you: If you pay $50,000 a year toward health care premiums for employees — and if you qualify for a 15% credit, you save… $7,500. If you save $7,500 a year from tax year 2010 through 2013, that’s total savings of $30,000. If, in 2014, you qualify for a slightly larger credit, say 20%, your savings go from $7,500 a year to $10,000 a year.

 

 

Even if you are a small business employer who did not owe tax during the year, you can carry the credit back or forward to other tax years. Also, since the amount of the health insurance premium payments is more than the total credit, eligible small businesses can still claim a business expense deduction for the premiums in excess of the credit. That’s both a credit and a deduction for employee premium payments.

 

There is good news for small tax-exempt employers too. The credit is refundable, so even if you have no taxable income, you may be eligible to receive the credit as a refund so long as it does not exceed your income tax withholding and Medicare tax liability. Refund payments issued to small tax-exempt employers claiming the refundable portion of credit are subject to sequestration. For more information on sequestration, click here. 

 

And finally, there may still be time to file an amended return to benefit from the credit this year. Generally, a claim for refund must be filed within 3 years from the time the return was filed or 2 years from the time the tax was paid, whichever of such periods expires the later, or if no return was filed by the taxpayer, within 2 years from the time the tax was paid.

 

Can you claim the credit?

Now that you know how the credit can make a difference for your business, let’s determine if you can claim it.

 

To be eligible for the credit,  you must:

• cover at least 50% of the cost of employee-only (not family or dependent) health care coverage for each of your employees
• have fewer than 25 full-time equivalent employees (FTEs)
• have average wages of less than $50,000 (as adjusted for inflation beginning in 2014) per year
• purchase group medical insurance through the SHOP Marketplace (or qualify for an exception to this requirement) to be eligible for the credit for tax years 2014 and beyond.

 

How do you claim the credit?

You must use IRS Form 8941, Credit for Small Employer Health Insurance Premiums, to calculate the credit. For detailed information on filling out this form, see the Instructions for Form 8941.

 

If you are a small business, include the amount as part of the general business credit on your income tax return.

If you are a tax-exempt organization, include the amount on line 44f of the Form 990-T, Exempt Organization Business Income Tax Return. You must file the Form 990-T in order to claim the credit, even if you don’t ordinarily do so.