Employers with health plan years starting 7/1/2021 must make sure they are offering coverage to all full-time employees.
Determining which members of your workforce are full-time is an important first step for ACA compliance. Applicable large employers must offer affordable health coverage to their full-time employees or pay a tax penalty.
An employer uses one of two methods for counting hours to calculate full-time status.
An hour of service is each hour an employee is paid or entitled to payment. For hourly employees, hours are counted by records of actual hours worked. For non-hourly employees, hours may be calculated using one of the following options:
An employer may apply different measurement methods for different reasonable classifications of employees. All employers must review hours worked in either a monthly period or look-back period to understand the employees to whom benefits must be offered.
If you are starting a new plan year and use the lookback measurement method, you should make sure that anyone who has calculated to be a full-time employee is offered coverage for the upcoming stability period (usually the plan year). Reviewing offers of coverage at the beginning of the plan year can help save problems down the road.
For information about BAS’ Affordable Care Act data collection and reporting service, contact your account manager or solutions@basusa.com.