WASHINGTON – The Employers for Flexibility in Health Care (E-Flex) coalition made the request yesterday in a letter to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the Treasury Department and the Labor Department. The Obama administration provided earlier transition relief granting employers flexibility in determining which of their employers are full-time during 2014, which at the time was the year the employer mandate was scheduled to take effect. Now that the mandate’s enforcement has been delayed one year, the coalition is asking for this relief to be extended through 2015.

“Given that 2015 will now be the first year in which employers could face excise taxes…employers need clarification regarding whether such transition relief will be extended into 2015,” the group wrote. “Timely clarification around the application of these and other transition rules in 2015 will minimize confusion for employers working towards compliance with the law in 2014 and 2015.”

Employers are going to have to comply with various reporting requirements under the law so that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) can verify whether employers that are offering health care are complying with the employer mandate. NACS is urging the government to ensure that these reporting requirements are as simple, streamlined and efficient as possible.

Simply put, NACS wants to make sure its members don’t have to duplicate reporting requirements for the IRS, HHS and other agencies implementing Obamacare. This can be particularly problematic with the employer mandate because HHS is tasked with determining whether an employee is entitled to a subsidy on an exchange, while the IRS is responsible for determining whether an employer should be penalized.

If an employer provides adequate health-care coverage to its employees, yet an employee is nonetheless able to receive a subsidy on an exchange, employers should not be penalized.  Without adequate reporting mechanisms, however, the various government agencies implementing the healthcare law may not communicate to one another that employers have in fact provided adequate coverage. NACS wants regulators to implement the law in a manner that minimizes unnecessary penalties on employers that comply with the law. Otherwise, employers that provide sufficient coverage under the law may nonetheless have to endure an expensive penalty appeal process.