ACA Reporting Got You Down? Organize Your Tasks by Choosing our 2019 ACA Checklist

By Gargi Talegaonkar, Product Manager

Welcome to the 2019 Affordable Care Act reporting tax year season. Towards the end of the year you’re going to be knee-deep in data, forms, and compliance standards, and pressed for time to get everything together prior to the mandated deadlines. Finding and organizing all your benefits data, tracking your employees, determining your responsibility as an employer and the eligibility of your employees, and filling out all those forms can be difficult and burdensome. On top of that, you feel pressure to ensure accuracy and completion, with the IRS looking over your shoulder, ACA compliance is a huge priority for your company.

In order to stay compliant with the 2019 ACA requirements and avoid costly penalties and fees, there are ongoing activities that all employers are required to perform all year long. Let us walk you through the tasks you should have on your ACA compliance checklist for this year

Continuous To-Dos

For starters, you need to keep records of every employee’s hours of service. These are the hours that an employee is available to the employer in addition to paid hours on the job. Hours of service include:

• Jury duty
• Military deployment
• FMLA absence
• Leave of absence
• Vacation
• Holiday
• Illness
• Incapacity
• Layoff

Monthly To-Dos

Each month you need to identify which employees per the ACA rules as “full-time” and therefore eligible for receiving health insurance. There are two methods of determining eligibility for coverage: the monthly measurement method and the lookback method.

The Monthly Measurement Method

With the monthly measurement method, the employer counts an employee’s hours of service for each month in a calendar year. For coverage purposes, this method requires an employer to treat an employee as full-time (eligible for coverage) for any month where the employee’s hours of service totals 130 or more.

The Look-Back Measurement Method

With the look-back measurement method, the employer determines the status of an employee as full-time during a future period – referred to as the stability period – based on the employee’s hours of service, month after month, during a prior test period (referred to as the measurement period).

Year-End To-Dos

At the end of the year, you must produce a 1095-C tax form for every full-time employee that shows whether they were offered health insurance and, if so, at what cost and what quality. This is where the monthly tracking records become very useful, since monthly breakdowns are required for the 1095-C. Next, you need to file copies of the employee forms with the IRS using a 1094-C transmittal form.

Key Takeaway for 2019 ACA Checklist

• Determine ALE status for 2019 based on 2018 data
• Check reporting obligations for ALEs that self-insure group health plans, ALEs that offer fully insured group health plans, and non-ALEs that self-insure group health plans
• Evaluate whether proper data collection is in place to meet reporting requirements
• Have a plan for timely form completion for employee statements
• Issue employee statements to employees on or before Jan. 31, 2020
• Submit required paper forms to IRS on or before Feb. 28, 2020.
• Submit required electronic forms to IRS on or before March 31, 2020.

We wish you the best for the upcoming season and are here to help with our dedicated ACA certified analysts.