Friday, June 20, 2014

Facts About Obamacare Small Business Health Insurance Requirements

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By Jeannie Monette


The Affordable Care Act, commonly referred to as Obamacare, was signed into law by the President in 2010. This new law created many changes with the way that Americans receive coverage from their employers. Many of these changes also affect small business owners. If you fall into this category, you may want to research the various obamacare small business health insurance requirements.

A small business is typically defined as any organization or company that has more than fifty employees. To determine how many employees a company has, the Affordable Care Act, for calculation purposes, normally counts not only the full-time employees who work more than thirty hours per week, but it also includes the hours worked by the part-time employees at the company. The hours worked by the part-time workers is then aggregated to calculate the full-time equivalents.

It is important to remember that the Affordable Care Act assesses liability on a controlled basis for the employer mandate. So companies that may be run separately may be treated as one company if they are owned by the same person or corporation. So if you are planning to purchase a company, you need to consider its workforce not only from an individual perspective, but also from the perspective of any unrelated companies it may own.

Smaller companies can also qualify for tax credits if they have fewer than twenty-five full-time employees. To be eligible for this tax credit, the company must pay at least half of the cost of a single coverage plan for each of their full-time employees. These employees must be workers earning less than $50,000 a year.

As long as the insurance policy has been bought through a SHOP provider, then the tax credit will be applicable to the company. If a company is uncertain of whether they qualify, they can use the Small Business Health Care Credit Estimator provided by the IRS. This was created to help companies determine their eligibility for the credit and the amount they can expect to receive.

In addition to tax credits, the Affordable Care Act also offers benefits for companies with workplace wellness programs. One of the main goals of the Act was to lower healthcare costs by encouraging healthy behavior habits. The promotion of wellness programs encourages companies to focus on creating healthy workplaces and offers rewards for people who meet certain goals, such as lowering their cholesterol or blood pressure. The maximum reward that is allowed is 30 percent coverage for health care.

Another goal of the ACA is to ensure that insurance companies spend money on medical care instead of administrative costs. Therefore, it provides rebates to any insurance company that spends less than 20 percent of its premium dollars on administrative costs.




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