Tag: ACA
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Explaining the Health Insurance Penalty
Accountants and tax preparers complain that they have been put in the position of enforcing the Affordable Care Act’s insurance mandate without compensation or training as health insurance agents. They are absolutely correct and this system has produced in some bizarre results. This was illustrated when one accountant wrote to me “I have clients that…
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“How do I get health insurance?”
Perhaps I should not be so shocked that now only days before the close of 2016 open enrollment season I am still receiving calls from individuals asking basic questions like “How do I get health insurance?” This blog post is simply an outline of the telephone conversation that follows in this situation. Our conversation starts with an…
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“Watcha gonna do?” – Tax professionals look at ACA compliance
How should a tax preparer handle suspected ACA penalties for small businesses? This post is inspired by the recent frustration expressed by an accountant who is a Facebook friend. My friend commented on one of my posts that even after a substantial investment of his time to learn and apply provisions of the Affordable Care act,…
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4980D Small Business Excise Tax Liability
This is the original submitted version of the article published by New Jersey CPA magazine under the same title in the January 2016 edition. The published version was slightly shortened to meet space requirements in the print publication. Background The Affordable Care Act adds Section 9815 to the Internal Revenue Code that requires employer-provided health plans…
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Small business ACA compliance toolkit available for 2015
My firm Freedom Benefits offers a 2015 compliance toolkit to help small business employers who find themselves on the wrong side of 2015 ACA requirements. The tax penalties can be significant for the tens of thousands of firms affected. Equally important, IMO, is the need to effectively communicate the required changes to employees who are…
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ACA – The law that really wasn’t
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) of 2010 really hasn’t had any significant impact on individuals and small businesses despite the volumes of information, rhetoric and threats of penalties for non-compliance. Today the Obama administration extended the individual health insurance enrollment deadline (again) regarding the individual mandate. Last week they postponed the effective deadline for small business…
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Disagreements about taxation of individual health insurance in 2014
It seems that the most confusing tax topic this year in the wake of the Affordable Care Act implementation is the taxation of individual health insurance when an employer is involved in the payment of the cost. No doubt other confusing issues are still on the horizon, but this one is here and now. Small business…
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Where is small business health insurance headed?
This article was written for 2014 and then updated for 2017. Little has changed. These points are still not well understood or agreed upon by professionals in the small business health insurance field: Quality of information: Most of the information published in this field appears to comes from those with a vested economic interest and/or political…