The House passed H.R. 3801, also known as the Employer Reporting Improvement Act, on Wednesday,. This bill is based on the Commonsense Reporting Act, legislation that NABIP has supported for several years. While the bill has successfully passed the House, it must be considered by the Senate and signed by the president prior to becoming law. Read NABIP’s press release on the bill’s passage here.

H.R. 3801 will provide much-needed relief for employers seeking to comply with the reporting requirements under Section 6055 and 6056 for enforcement of the ACA’s individual and employer mandates. This bill is a testament to the work NABIP members did advocating on our federal priorities in their respective Hill meetings during Capitol Conference earlier this year. NABIP has long sought these reforms and we look forward to advancing this as a bipartisan solution to address the challenges being faced under the health-reform law.

The Employer Reporting Improvement Act will ease the compliance reporting requirements for employers offering health insurance coverage to their employees. Specifically, the legislation would:

allow employers to substitute an individual’s full name and date of birth in place of a taxpayer identification number in certain circumstances, starting with tax returns due in 2025.
give certain large employers at least 90 days to respond to the first letter from the Treasury Department outlining a proposed shared employer responsibility payment, beginning in the taxable year after the date of the bill’s enactment.
specify that information that would be reported would include name and employer identification, who has been extended an offer of minimum essential coverage, whether coverage meets minimum value and the affordability safe harbor, and months that coverage is available without waiting periods.
allow employers to deliver reports to employees electronically without another consent form.
limit the time horizon for IRS lookback for prior compliance period in accordance with current regulatory and statutory guidelines.

All provisions of H.R. 3801 have been adapted from the Commonsense Reporting Act with the exception of a voluntarily prospective reporting system (where employers could provide to the IRS information about coverage offered to employees electronically at the employer’s OEP or by the statutory deadline at the employer’s election). The exclusion of this provision is a result of conversations with Treasury Department staff, who stated that the agency does not have the ability to create a federal data hub for exchanges to access data for individual verification of tax credits.

During the House’s voice vote on the bill, Representatives Adrian Smith (R-NE) and Mike Thompson (D-CA) – original sponsors of H.R. 3801 and longtime allies of NABIP on this issue – stated that they hope to continue working with the Treasury Department to come up with a solution on enabling prospective reporting.

NABIP is grateful to Congressmen Smith and Thompson for supporting this much-needed piece of bipartisan legislation, and we look forward to working with our allies in the Senate to get it to the president’s desk.

Source: National Association of Benefit and Insurance Professionals