Small Businesses Threatened With $36,500 IRS Fines For Helping Employees With Health Costs

Forbes ^ | 6/30/15 | Grace-Marie Turner

[Nachum]

Small businesses that reimburse employees for the cost of premiums for individual health insurance policies or pay their health costs directly will be fined up to $36,500 a year per employee under a new Internal Revenue Service regulation that takes effect July 1, 2015.

According to the notice, an employer arrangement that reimburses or pays for employee individual health premiums is considered to be a group health plan that is subject to the $100 per-employee per-day penalty. The penalty applies whether the reimbursement is considered a before-tax or after-tax contribution.

“It’s the biggest penalty no one is talking about,” said Kevin Kuhlman, policy director for the National Association of Independent Business. “The penalty for compensating employees for healthcare-related expenses is enough to destroy most small businesses.” You can read more in this NFIB post, “No Kidding: This Week IRS starts Punishing Businesses for Helping Workers Buy Insurance.”

The new IRS penalty is more than 18 times greater than the $2,000 employer-mandate penalty under ObamaCare for not providing qualifying health insurance for employees. And employers with fewer than 50 workers are not exempt, as they are from the employer-mandate penalty.

The rule appears nowhere in the Affordable Care Act but was developed by the Obama administration’s regulation writers at the IRS. The rule punishes small businesses for providing the only health insurance support many can afford – a contribution to help employees pay premiums for their individual or family health insurance policies or to help finance direct payment for medical services.

[Nachum]

Oh really? Whoda thunk Obamacare would be anything but kind and thoughtful, a boon to all.

Hey, I sell health insurance for a living. Tell me about it :(

[MortMan]

I was quoting the article - at least the excerpt here.

[MortMan]

Easy way around it. If you're cutting a separate check, then stop. Bump their pay that amount. Yes, it will be taxable, but it will certainly help with the additional costs.

I wonder if the IRS has already made this against the rules. From the article, the tax status of the assistance is immaterial. Substituting a raise for X dollars for the assistance of X dollars probably raises a flag in their system.

after all, NOT violating the $10K bank transaction limit (no matter why) is enough to get you investigated and have your money seized these days.

[unixfox]

If all businesses refused to pay then the problem would be solved.

F U I R S!

[unixfox]

I think that a collection of affected businesses should sue the crap out of Jonathan Gruber.

Screw that, I want his effing address.