As a not for profit entity, you may be wondering how the Affordable Care Act (ACA) affects you and what you do. All aspects of the act still apply to you. What are some of the key provisions you need to know and understand?  Following is a summary of items to consider:

  • Are you an Applicable Large Employer (ALE)?
    • Do you know what your full time equivalent (FTE) employee count is? If you have more than 50 FTE’s, then you are an ALE.
    • Do you know how your seasonal or part time workers may affect this?
  • Could you be part of a controlled group?
    • There may be common control issues that you haven’t thought of that will push you into being an ALE when you thought otherwise you weren’t.
  • Are you currently discriminating?
    • If so, you can no longer do this beginning January 1, 2014, regardless of your size.
    • There are penalties for discriminating, but they have been delayed, for how long is unknown. Once in place, they will be $100 per day per employee discriminated against.
    • This also includes having different waiting periods for different employee ‘groups’.
  • Are you subject to the “pay or play” penalties?
    • While this portion of the ACA has been delayed until 2015, now is the time to make sure you are operating in the way you desire to be in compliance once the law comes into effect in 2015.
    • The penalty is either $2,000 or $3,000 depending on if you are offering insurance or not. These beginning penalty amounts are subject to increase with medical inflation after the first year.
    • To avoid the penalty if you are an ALE, you must offer coverage that meets minimum essential benefit and is “affordable” to the employees (they cannot pay more than 9.5% of household income).
  • Have you set your measurement, administrative and stability periods yet?
    • If not, you should now. For a lot of people, their first measurement period may be starting in October or November of 2013. You will want to be prepared for this and be sure you are tracking all of the information you need to be.
  • If you haven’t already done so, every employer should be notifying their employees of the exchange. The deadline for this is October 1, 2013. If you need samples of these forms, they can be found on our website www.ktllp.cpa.
  • The individual mandate to have health insurance or pay a penalty is still in place for January 1, 2014.

We will continue to monitor this topic and keep you updated with any further changes. The Affordable Care Act niche group at Ketel Thorstenson is here to answer all of your questions as it relates to the ACA and your business.