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Thursday, 8 January 2015

Obamacare & How It Affects Your Business

By Jeannie Monette


Everyone benefits greatly with health insurance and this is especially true when dealing with your employees and business. However, not everyone has the privilege to apply and get the necessary amount of insurance coverage particularly with regards to small business. With the emergence of ObamaCare it is now easy to provide individuals a measure of insurance coverage today. With that said, a lot of small time business owners are quite worried that this may affect their business entirely.

ObamaCare, which is actually titled the Affordable Care Act, requires that employers purchase and provide the necessary health insurance for their workers or pay a penalty by 2015/2016. ObamaCare small business health insurance requirements offer nice incentives to such companies as they are given tax breaks and tax credits available via SHOP exchange. This is possible if the small business has an equivalent of 25 full-time employees or less. It should also be noted that 90% of US firms today have less than 20 full-time employees and ObamaCare does not necessarily hurt their business all in all.

Rising health insurance cost is one of the main reason why small business today are having a hard time providing their employees with the much needed insurance coverage. Employers are tasked to insure their full-time employees in small businesses with 50 or more employees through with ObamaCare. As discussed previously, a good amount of privileges such as generous tax credits are given to businesses with 25 or less full-time employees if they ever decide to make use of ObamaCare.

By 2016 under the employer insurance mandate, business owners need to start insuring their workers. A huge part of this mandate is included in the Employer Shared Responsibility. Those who did not provide or offer health coverage to their 50 or more full-time employees will be required to pay an annual employer mandate fee. This fee is based upon the full-time equivalent employees and not just full-time employees. In addition, unlike the employer contributions to employee premiums, the Employer Shared Responsibility Payment is not tax deductible.

The line between full-time and part-time employees under ObamaCare can be a little bit obscure. Under ObamaCare, employees are considered to be full-time when they working on an average of more than 30 hours a week and need to be provided with benefits under the law. On the other hand, part-time employees are those who work on an average of less than 30 hours a week and aren't required to follow the employer insurance mandate.

It is always best to provide them with the necessary amount of protection throughout the whole course of their employment whether one has full-time or part-time employees. A boost in overall productivity as well as their morale is given with such coverage. Get additional information about ObamaCare when dealing with your business today.




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