Some American employers won’t be required to provide health insurance to their workers next year.
On Monday, the U.S. Department of the Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service issued final regulations implementing the employer responsibility provisions under the Affordable Care Act that take effect in 2015.
Mid-size companies (those with 50 to 99 employees) that don’t yet provide affordable coverage to their full-time workers will now have until 2016 instead of 2015 before they need to provide health insurance.
Larger employers (those with more than 100 workers) will also get a break. They have to offer insurance to 70% of full-time staff next year, instead of 95%. By 2016, those employers will need to meet the higher threshold of 95%.
In the United States, just 2% of the country’s employers are defined as large and another 2% are considered mid-size.
The rest of employers are considered small businesses; they aren’t required to provide coverage under the act.
“While about 96% of employers are not subject to the employer responsibility provision, for those employers that are, we will continue to make the compliance process simpler and easier to navigate,” says assistant secretary for tax policy Mark J. Mazur. “Today’s final regulations phase in the standards to ensure that larger employers either offer quality, affordable coverage or make an employer responsibility payment starting in 2015 to help offset the cost to taxpayers of coverage or subsidies to their employees.”
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