Breaking with long standing tradition—i.e., issuing important rules on a Friday before a holiday weekend, or (failing that) any Friday (hence the reference to Week 45½ in this post)—the Treasury Department and the IRS today issued a 227-page final regulation under the Affordable Care Act’s employer shared responsibility (a/k/a “pay-or-play”) rules. From the perspective of affected employers (i.e., those with 50 or more full-time and full-time equivalent employees), this new rule is arguably the single most important to be issued under the Act.
A fact sheet issued by the Treasury Department along with the final regulations provides some context for the new rules and alerts readers to some of the highlights, which include:
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Clarifications regarding whether employees of certain types or in certain occupations are considered full-time
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Rules governing seasonal employees and adjunct faculty members
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A delayed effective date for employers with at least 50 but fewer than 100 full-time employees, and
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Additional transition rules.
In the next few weeks we will be parsing this new final regulation, explaining its key provisions, and speculating about how affected employers might comply.
