Employer group asks the IRS to ease health paperwork
ERIC wants the agency to fix the reporting timeline and allow more electronic notice delivery.
The ERISA Industry Committee wants the Internal Revenue Service to do something about health plan paperwork.
The large-employer group put two health plan reporting change proposals on a wish list it sent the IRS last week.
One calls for federal regulators to make electronic delivery of ERISA health plan disclosures the default delivery option.
Another would let employers send coverage information to the IRS right before the Affordable Care Act public exchange plan open enrollment period, instead of long after the coverage year has ended.
“ERIC believes that the guidance requested above would resolve issues affecting broad classes of taxpayers, including employee benefit plans, plan sponsors and plan participants,” ERIC President James Gelfand writes in the letter. “The recommended guidance would address several unanswered questions and also reduce burdens.”
ERIC is a Washington-based group for the kinds of large, multistate employers that come under the jurisdiction of the federal Employee Retirement Security Act, rather than state insurance laws, when they run their plans.
Gelfand submitted the letter in response to an IRS request for suggestions for tax guidance projects that could be easy to complete and could help many people.
Health plan notices: The U.S. Labor Department agreed in 2020 to let plan sponsors make electronic delivery the default delivery option for ERISA retirement plan notices, Gelfand writes in the ERIC letter.
The IRS should make the default delivery options for ERISA health plans more like the rules for ERISA retirement plans, Gelfand says.
Information coverage reporting forms: Employers use IRS Form 1095-B and Form 1095-C to help employees document whether they do or do not have what counts as solid health coverage under the Affordable Care Act rules.
Today, Gelfand writes, the IRS requires employers to file their Form 1095-B’s and Form 1095-C’s after the end of the ACA annual enrollment period.
Related: What employees need to know now to file tax forms for PPACA
The Commonsense Reporting Act bill, H.R. 1264, would help employers by letting them report coverage information before the plan year starts, while the memory of what coverage participants have is fresh in their minds, rather than requiring them to wait until later in the year to provide coverage information returns, Gelfand says.
Credit: Allison Bell/ALM