Posted on 01/13/2013 5:18:13 AM PST by IbJensen
(CNSNews.com) – The Internal Revenue Service warned employers in a new regulatory proposal not to come up with clever schemes to avoid Obamacare’s employer health insurance mandate.
The IRS said it would soon issue “anti-abuse rules” to discourage employers from taking advantage of any regulatory loopholes.
“The Treasury Department and the IRS are aware of various structures being considered under which employers might use temporary staffing agencies (or other staffing agencies)… to evade application of section 4980H [the employer insurance mandate],” the IRS said in a proposed regulatory announcement issued December 28.
The IRS said it would issue a so-called “anti-abuse rule” in an attempt to prevent employers from using temp agencies to circumvent the mandate, essentially writing into law that even though an employer hires temporary workers and therefore is not technically under the mandate’s jurisdiction, the IRS would fine them anyway for not providing health insurance.
“It is anticipated that the final regulations will contain an anti-abuse rule,” the agency said. “Under that anticipated rule, if an individual performs services as an employee of an employer, and also performs the same or similar services for that employer in the individual’s purported employment at a temporary staffing agency or other staffing agency of which the employer is a client, then all the hours of service are attributed to the employer for purposes of applying section 4980H.”
In other words, if an employer hires someone part-time, then uses an employment agency to bring the same person on for a second part-time shift, the IRS will still hold the employer liable under the ObamaCare mandate.
Similarly, IRS said that if an employer hires the same person for two part-time stints by using two different employment agencies, it will hold either the employer or one of the employment agencies liable for the mandate’s penalties.
The issue stems from the employer health insurance mandate in Obamacare, which requires employers with 50 or more full-time employees to provide government-approved, affordable health insurance to at least 95 percent of their employees (and dependents).
If any of those employees receives government health insurance subsidies, the IRS will fine the employer up to $2,000 per employee, according to a formula outlined by the IRS.
The warning is part of proposed regulations from the IRS outlining how employers must determine whether they meet the 50 full-time-employee threshold and whether the insurance they offer meets government standards.
The IRS said that a full-time employee is one who works an average of 30 hours per week or 130 hours per month, roughly 6 hours of paid service per weekday.
The IRS also said that in order for an employer’s health insurance plan to pass muster with the government, it must be available to 95 percent of employees and cost no more than 9.5 percent of an employee’s wages.
The agency specified that employers could still fall under the mandate if they employ enough part-time workers to equal 50 full-time workers. For example, if an employer has 40 full-time workers and 20 part-time workers, that employer would be considered by the government to have 50 full-time workers and would be subject to the mandate because the 20 part-time workers average to 10 full-time workers – meeting the 50 full-time-worker threshold.
I saw, and read, one other reply. What are you referring to?
The agency specified that employers could still fall under the mandate if they employ enough part-time workers to equal 50 full-time workers. For example, if an employer has 40 full-time workers and 20 part-time workers, that employer would be considered by the government to have 50 full-time workers and would be subject to the mandate because the 20 part-time workers average to 10 full-time workers – meeting the 50 full-time-worker threshold.
“...but this one part does require a low-moral decision by the employer.”
Please explain that statement, especially as to why it is a “low-moral” decision.
In other words, you will be PUNISHED FOR FOLLOWING THE WORDS OF THE LEGISLATION.
And look: a bureaucracy, an unelected cabal of clowns, is being allowed to create law.
Just like the EPA.
Bingo. Layoffs will come en masse in low skill jobs.
So, don’t pay the fine and make them get a judgement that can be thrown out.
See post by SiriusLee. My reply to them, acknowledging my mistake.
What is it that you need from me?
The simple way to enrage and make employees and motivate them to throw all liberals out of office is to reduce their pay/salary directly by the Obama cost to the business and have the business pay the coerced “premium” to Obama’s communist Obama Care.
Only then, will the people be so enraged that they will actually rise up in mass and overthrow his government.
Along with the "50 or more" rule they are already weakening.
It won't be long before every family has add at least one indigent Obama voter to their own personal health plan, in the interest of "fundamental fairness." :)
Growing businesses making the transition from small to medium-sized are a huge headaches for Communist revolutionaries. They give the proletariat subversive ideas about personal success and threaten the profits of the Revolution's large corporatist backers. They must be destroyed.
Along with the "50 or more" rule they are already weakening.
It won't be long before every family has add at least one indigent Obama voter to their own personal health plan, in the interest of "fundamental fairness." :)
Growing businesses making the transition from small to medium-sized are a huge headaches for Communist revolutionaries. They give the proletariat subversive ideas about personal success and threaten the profits of the Revolution's large corporatist backers. They must be destroyed.
Please explain that statement, especially as to why it is a “low-moral” decision.
It's one thing to hire many part-time people in order to comply with regulations, so you rotate many people through employment. It's another thing entirely, at least to me, to bring the same person back in under another payroll in order to avoid the tax. If that person is that good an employee and you are willing to play that game, as an employer you are not a good person.
Maybe if I used the expression "low-rent" instead of "low morals" it would have been easier to understand my intent?
Wyatt’s Torch.
I am in the IT field as a contractor.
The IRS is already looking at us to make us employees because the companies that contract with us have to much control over the when, what, where, and how of the job.
Extortion-Care. This is all about the failed bailout of 2008, thus now attempting Collateral Transformation to secure U.S. downgraded debt, and bailout favored “insurance” companies, which are really “insurance-banking” investment firms.
All on everyone else but the “Exempt Ones.”
Obama’s IRS attack dogs are baring their teeth.
They care. they all think that if they cooperate they will part of the new Nomenklatura.
Employers don’t want to pay for health insurance.
In the end, the government will take over a la single payer.
ObamaCare was never intended as anything more than a rest stop enroute to the final destination - government-run health care.
Clarity.
So trying to avoid a tax is low-moral or low-rent? An employee can be held in high regard but it does not follow that high regard will justify paying the employee more. Pay is typically based on the amount of profit an employee helps produce. A tax is simply an added cost that an employee will have to cover in their worth to an employer.
As to trying to get around this idiotic tax on employment by structing one job into two different employers, it may be better for the employee than having to work at two different places.
If the customer will not buy said company’s products because the price is too high than the employee is not needed. But if the price can be lowered by structuring the one job into two and thereby avoiding a tax, the price can be lowered and the job retained.
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