Skip to main content
Insurance

New Legislation Signed!

By January 6, 2025No Comments
Business Insurance - Employees Having a Meeting in a Modern Conference Room

HOT OFF THE PRESSES!!  

New Legislative Updates Signed over the holidays

Hi everyone, this is short and sweet and these are so new that there’s no real guidance yet, but these are both positive.  

As President Biden is exiting the White House looks like he’s trying to help businesses, especially smaller businesses, with some of the ACA rules that were driving costs and extra administration for businesses.  

Here are the high-level updates as well as links to the actual bills from congress.gov.  Interesting to see on these links, the bill to eliminate/reduce the reporting requirements AND the bill to give employers an extended amount of time to respond to IRS audit letters BOTH passed the House back in June of 2023.  Took almost 18 months to make their way through the Senate and then to the President’s desk to get signed. They took a while, but I’ll take these.  

The filing requirement alone was a huge admin burden for businesses and it was costly.  In my opinion, this was essentially a tax on businesses as most had to either hire people to handle this internally or pay someone externally to handle it, and for what?  The individual penalty was taken away back in 2018.  Good job government, only took 6 years to lessen this requirement.  Now let’s get rid of it completely, please.

Thanks to our friend over at Mineral and NABIP for sharing this good news.

Alternative Distribution Methods for Form 1095-B and 1095-C

Beginning with the 2024 reporting year, employers and insurance carriers will be able to use an alternative method for distributing Affordable Care Act (ACA) Form 1095-C or 1095-B to employees. Guidance for using the alternative method has not been provided yet.  Link below to the congressional site for the bill.

The Paperwork Reduction Act was signed on December 23, 2024.

Extended IRS Audit Letter Response Time

The new flexibilities increase the time allowed to respond to IRS notice of audit, Letter 226-J, from 30 days to 90 days. This applies to letters received after December 23, 2024. 

The Employer Reporting Improvement Act was signed on December 23, 2024.

Please note on this second update, that this is only for letters received AFTER the day this bill was signed, so please don’t get in trouble if you have any audit letter that is dated prior to.

Thanks to everyone for the quick read, anything that lessens the financial and admin burden on employers who are trying to take care of their employees will always be welcomed with open arms.

Talk soon!

Ryan