Wednesday, May 28, 2014

Obamacare Small Business Health Insurance Plan

By Jeannie Monette


Provision of health cover has remained a huge challenge for small businesses over the years. Obamacare small business health insurance cover is designed to address these challenges. It offers tax credits and breaks to offset the expenses of providing such cover to employees and extending the same to families. The plan has facilitated establishment of market places or SHOPs in every state to facilitate purchase of these plans by interested businesses depending on their needs.

Employers with less than 50 employees are provided with unique packages that include tax breaks and credits for providing cover. Packages depend on whether they are full-time or equivalent and their annual wage. Businesses with 25 or less employees will be considered in 2014. Their wage bill must be below 50,000 dollars as well. They are provided with tax credits so that they can offset the premiums paid for their employees.

Tax credits are backdated to 2010. This means that a business may claim the credit for any year since then. By 2015, businesses that employ over 100 workers are required to organize cover for all full time employees if their wage is over 250,000 dollars. This clause takes effect in 2015. This is what has been referred to as employer mandate in some quarters.

Businesses with between 50 and 99 employees must provide them with cover by 2016. Temporary employees with terms that almost resemble full time workers must be included. Businesses will have to factor a penalty of 2000 dollars for failure to comply with this directive. If employees get their cover through market place, the employer will be required to include 3000 dollars as penalty during the end of year federal income tax filing.

There has been an increase of . 9 percent on medicare part A tax for businesses with more than 250,000 dollars in annual profits. The figure is split into half between the employer and the employee. Employees who are affected by this increase are those who make 250,000 annually as a family or 200,000 as individuals.

Businesses with over 50 employees are required to furnish their workers with information about their market place or exchange rates. The SHOP will be opened in November 2014 while direct enrollment takes effect from the beginning of 2015. Employers with over 50 employees will have to wait for November 2015 for direct enrollment.

The SHOP plan is available from agents with the chance to redeem the credits once the shop opens. The taxes may be backdated or carried forward to cover for expenses over the years it was not in force. The issues to consider include the size of ones workforce and income for the year.




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