The IRS today announced a delay in the enforcement of a little-known penalty under the President’s health care law facing small business owners who help their employees pay for their health insurance. These small business owners are facing fines of as much as $100 per day per employee for helping their employees purchase health insurance. Sen. Chuck Grassley proposed an amendment to fix this problem during a Finance Committee mark-up last month. He is pursuing a permanent fix. Grassley made the following comment on the delay.
“I’ve heard from several Iowa small business owners who feared they could be subject to thousands of dollars in penalties simply because they helped their employee pay for health insurance in 2014. For these and other affected businesses, the penalty relief is welcome news, but ultimately it only delays the inevitable. Small businesses are still prohibited from reimbursing their employees to purchase health insurance. It’s just a matter of when they have to come into compliance with the law. Small businesses and their employees still will be hurt going forward. Congress has to fix this problem. This is the kind of problem that Obamacare created because it was poorly considered and rushed into law.”
More on the penalty and Grassley’s work on a fix is available here.
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