How Does the ACA Impact Businesses With Many Part-Time Employees?
How does the Affordable Care Act Impact businesses? For example a business with approximately 30 full time employees and 300 part time employees?
Answer
The employer mandate is primarily based on full-time equivalent hours, that counts part-time hours plus full-time employees. Every 30 part-time ours counts as one full-time equivalent. When total full-time equivalents and full-time workers exceeds 50 than the firm most comply with the mandate. That means they have to provide coverage to each full-time employee (not part-time) or pay a $3,000 fee per employee who gets tax credits on the health insurance marketplace.
In the above example the employer is exempt from the fee through a part of the mandate that says the first 30 full-time employees are exempt (this helps smaller first transition to larger firms and not get weighted down by the mandate). So in theory even though this firm must comply they wouldn't actually end up owing the fee!
If an employer owes the fee because they didn’t cover workers, it’s a flat $2,000 per full-time employee (excluding first 30 employees). If only a few end up with unaffordable coverage or if that coverage doesn’t meet minimum value standards, it’s $3,000 per full-time employee who got cost assistance (but, never more than $2,000 per full-time employee). The fee is always per-month, so it’s always 1/12 of those annual totals for each month.
You can learn more about the employer mandate here.