On Tuesday (July 3) evening, it was announced that a key portion of the Affordable Care Act that requires employers to provide health care to its employees will be pushed back until 2015.
The employer mandate, or as the White House calls it, the “shared responsibility” rules, will not require employers to cover their workers or penalize them for not doing so. The sudden change in the three-year-old law was a shock for some and gave fuel to critics of Obamacare.
Mark J. Mazur, Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy, detailed the change on the Treasury Department's blog.
From Mark J. Mazur:
The Administration is announcing that it will provide an additional year before the ACA mandatory employer and insurer reporting requirements begin. This is designed to meet two goals. First, it will allow us to consider ways to simplify the new reporting requirements consistent with the law. Second, it will provide time to adapt health coverage and reporting systems while employers are moving toward making health coverage affordable and accessible for their employees.
Business owners with more than 50 workers would have been mandated by the ACA to provide health insurance starting in 2014, or pay a penalty of $2,000 per employee. The push back from employers was an extremely effective one, prompting the Obama administration to implement the pause in the law.
The owners claimed that the law would have hurt small businesses attempting to thrive in the slowly recovering economy. Let us know what you think of this new revelation in the comments.
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