Independent Contractors

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Jed, employed by Drysdale LLC, a janitorial contractor, recently began working nights at the Commerce Bank, supervised by the Bank’s Chief of Security.  Jed’s family had health insurance until his wife lost her job early this year.  Drysdale didn’t offer insurance, so Jed bought a policy through Healthcare.gov.  With the federal subsidy, his premium is…

Nearly three years ago, having spent hundreds of hours immersed in ACA minutiae, we anticipated that clients would not react well to fees for services that consisted principally of telling them that they had asked the wrong question. So we decided, against tradition and much conventional wisdom, to sink lots of unpaid partner time into…

It’s the “silly season” on the Hill and a busy season for ACA regulators. This article gives you brief notes about Notice 2015-87, information reporting relief and the § 4980I delay buried in the omnibus spending bill.

IRS Notice 2015-87 first answers questions on the periphery of earlier guidance effectively killing stand-alone HRAs.…

On July 15, 2015, DOL’s Wage & Hour Division issued Administrator’s Interpretation No. 2015-01, titled, “ The Application of the Fair Labor Standards Act’s ‘Suffer or Permit’ Standard in the Identification of Employees Who Are Misclassified as Independent Contractors.” Nothing new there, right? All well-counseled employers know that the DOL takes an especially dim…

This morning, the Supreme Court of the United States, by a 6-3 margin, removed the last legal obstacle to employer mandate tax enforcement. Because the HHS had authority under Code § 36B to subsidize insurance plans bought through Healthcare.gov (according to an IRS rule), those subsidies properly will trigger Code § 4980H employer mandate…

Beginning in 2016, Code § 6056 requires large employers to complete, file with IRS and deliver to employees a Form 1095-C for each full-time employee offered minimum essential coverage for each 2015 coverage month.  So, who are your Form 1095-C employees?  Might they include people not on your payroll?

Here’s the relevant IRS rule defining…

“Applicable Large Employers” are exposed, beginning January 1, 2015, to significant new taxes if they fail to offer “minimum essential coverage” to at least 70% of their full-time employees and their dependents.  Employers also must permit full-time employee coverage to become effective within a “90-day” maximum waiting period.  Unlawfully delaying coverage exposes the employer both…

Recently, we have received requests to re-post prior articles on the 90-day waiting period, the employer mandate final rules (supplemented here, here, here and here), and our pop quiz for ACA consultants.  As we approach our 100th article, some readers apparently find the scroll-down browsing process tedious.  So do we.  Here…

Long before the ACA was a Senate cloakroom concept, the IRS had a burr under its saddle about employee misclassification, because payroll withholding tax collections vary directly with W-2 employee payrolls.  Employer incentives run in the other direction, including minimum wage, overtime, union organizing, OSHA, benefit plan eligibility and EEO duties owed to one’s own…