Considering that billions of dollars could be at stake, businesses are seeking to keep the IRS from enforcement actions that would impose large penalties on employers who didn't provide health coverage to their employees beginning in 2015. And they may have some political allies.

According to a report from The Hill, House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Brady, R-TX, has said that he has discussed the idea of repeal or delay of the employer mandate with Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, as well as other members of the Ways and Means Committee. The mandate, imposed by the Affordable Care Act, would penalize companies with more than 50 employees anywhere from hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars for failing to provide coverage to their employees.

The penalties took effect in 2015, five years after the ACA's passage, but the IRS did not begin enforcing them right away. Instead, in November of last year the agency announced that it would begin to assess those penalties, beginning with 2015. Brady is cited in the report saying that he hopes relief from the mandate would be retroactive, so that employers who failed to offer coverage back to 2015 would not be penalized.