Obama Administration Announces Postponement on Key Elements of ACA
The Obama Administration announced on Tuesday, July 3, 2013 that it will postpone the requirement that employers with 50 or more full-time employees provide health insurance to such employees or face significant monetary penalties. The posponement, which pushed the employer mandate back to January 1, 2015, is designed to “provide time to adapt health coverage and reporting systems while employers are moving toward making health coverage affordable and accessible,” according to a July 2 statement by Mark J. Mazur, The Treasury Department’s assistant secretary for tax policy. This means employers won’t pay IRS penalties if they don’t offer health insurance benefits next year. This one-year reprieve on the employer mandate penalties and reporting obligations does not apply to the other provisions of the ACA that are scheduled to take effect in 2014.