Morning, everyone. Thank you for joining us today for our webinar. It is the second part to our Back to the Basics Summer Series, ACA Reporting and Affordability Made Clear. I’m Robin Carlini. I’ll be your webinar moderator today, and I’ll be introducing you to our host, Stacy Davidson, in just a minute. I did drop a couple things in the chat function that you can see. I included next month’s webinar invites for Back to the Basics Part three Top Employer Mistakes, and also our latest blog that has an employee hours calculator. So, a couple resources for you in the chat. And a little disclaimer, Solaris does not give legal counsel or advice. We are experts, but you still will have to go to your legal counsel for specific questions. And a little bit of housekeeping. This webinar is being recorded. All registrants will receive the recording tomorrow. And in your Zoom webinar menu, you will see a chat and a Q and A. You can put questions in either of those features and we can answer throughout the webinar or towards the end of the webinar, depending on when they come in. Also upon exiting the webinar, there is a survey if you don’t mind filling that out that helps us with all these webinars that we plan. And a little bit about Solaris. One in four ALEs in the US use Solaris for their ACA reporting, so we’re most proud of that function. And we’ve been in business with ACA since the inception of the law. So, everyone you do get to help you with ACA reporting here is an ACA knowledge expert. Our employees don’t like to leave because we just love the ACA so much. And now I get to introduce Stacy Davidson, our senior director of sales. Stacy, can you tell everyone a little bit about yourself? Hi, everyone. It’s a pleasure to be here with you today. I have been with well, we were a company called Syncstream before we were acquired by Solirix, but I started in twenty fourteen. So Robin is correct. We were pretty passionate about the Affordable Care Act. And it’s something that we enjoy helping employers and our broker partners and our other partners with just the complexity and the regulations. We know it can be a little overwhelming, little bit, a lot to work through. So our passion comes from understanding the law and the regulations and being passionate about helping our clients and partners through it. So in my role, I work with employers and their either broker or other partners just to figure out which part of our software functionality they need, address their ACA pain points and try to provide them with some peace of mind and confidence going into their ACA reporting each year. Okay, and now we’re going to start with a little ACA reporting overview. But before we get started, we are going to launch our first poll. I’ll go ahead and get that launched. Okay, what is your current status with ACA reporting? Are you a Solarix customer? Are you currently evaluating ACA vendors? Or you’re with a vendor and you’re satisfied? Do you handle ACA internally? Or you’re just here to stay informed? Okay. We have a little bit of everything today. Twenty one percent are customers. Thank you for being here. Fourteen percent are evaluating ACA vendors. Twenty seven percent now handle ACA internally. Congratulations to you. That’s very difficult. And then forty percent just here to stay informed. So, thank you. That just gives us, you know, a benchmark of where everyone is coming from. What do you think, Stacy? Yeah, love that you said congratulations to those who are handling it internally. I often say the same thing when I meet with somebody who does their own codes. And you know our purpose in providing these monthly webinars is because we’re subject matter expertise And we don’t often talk about our software a whole lot in monthly webinars, but I think it’s important to know that our main focus here besides providing subject matter expertise, when we work with clients, it really is to minimize compliance risks, reduce administrative burden. And I can’t stress enough about providing peace of mind and confidence in your reporting. And so if you’re ever in need of any services around ACA compliance and reporting or even e filing or state e filing, we’d love to help you. We don’t talk enough about that. This isn’t really a sales motivated presentation, but just know that we’re pretty proud of what we do. A lot of employers rely on us. And if you need anything ACA related, we’d be happy to help. So I don’t know, you know, what size employers, what size groups we have on the call, but we’re just gonna talk about, you know, some basics here, which is our purpose of these back to the basics summer, you know, webinar series. So just as maybe a refresher to some of you, this may be new information to some of you, but obviously, we’re here to talk about who has to, you know, the Affordable Care Act reporting and obligations. So who has to report? Well, it’s mandatory for anybody who has fifty or more full time or full time equivalent employees and any non applicable large employer group who offers self funded coverage. And if you are on the bubble, we do have a calculator on our website that can help you determine your ALE status. It’s also important to note that if you are part of a control group with common ownership, there is you do count your employees across that. So if there’s any question about whether or not you have to report due to your size, then that would be where you want to take a look at all the regulations around it. So what is the reporting? It’s you’re reporting every year about your offering to the offer of coverage, medical coverage to your employees. And we’re you do that using a series of forms there’s ten ninety five and ten ninety four form depending on whether or not you’re an applicable large employer. It would be a C form. If you’re not an applicable large employer and you’re offering self funded coverage, it would be a B form. We handle both. And then what happens if you do not file? There’s penalties for not filing, there’s penalties for, or at least IRS notices and potential penalties for reporting inaccurate information. Certainly there’s notifications if an employee goes to the marketplace and then you have to defend whether or not you offered coverage that was timely, affordable and so forth and so on. So that’s just the obligation of employers is to know if you’re an applicable large employer, report yearly, determine which form you need to use, and make sure your compliance is buttoned up because there could be IRS notices or penalties involved. Why it matters? For employers, it’s important to determine your applicable large employer status, because then you have the obligation to file. And we’ll talk a little bit about, you know, tracking eligibility, if you have a workforce that is variable hour, maybe, you know, peaks and valleys with seasonality, or, you know, you have a workforce that you’re relying on that maybe isn’t, know, working variable hours and consistently due to, you know, manufacturing hospitality. So, you know, medical and health care, determining eligibility, so that you know who to offer coverage to, and we’ll talk a little bit about that, who to offer coverage to and also to protect yourself in the event that a non, full time employee goes to the marketplace. The other obligation is to offer affordable coverage. We’re going to talk about that today. And then again, of course, meeting the obligation to file these forms annually. The risks are penalties. You have risks of, you know, doing it incorrectly could come back to haunt you with having to, you know, have some notices from the IRS in the event that somebody goes to the marketplace and gets a premium tax credit. There could be some administrative burden of having to try to defend yourself because we like to say, when you get a notice that’s a two twenty six J letter for an employee going to the marketplace, the IRS considers you guilty until you prove yourself innocent. So why all this matters is that obviously there can be financial burdens to your company, there could be, you know, and with that, the, you know, a lot of administrative work to try to get, you know, uncover what actually happened. So good record keeping, having a true process for a lot of this will go a long way to kind of keeping you buttoned up from having to recreate or figure out what happened years before or financial penalties associated with non compliance. So, you know, we’re going to take a look at a ten ninety five C form in a few slides, but the information that goes into, reporting is obviously employee information, there’s going to be a form populated for each benefit eligible employee. So we wouldn’t be named social address, as well as information about the employer, again, contact information for the IRS to contact you. But the meat of the forms is really going to come about, you know, the offer of coverage was it back minimum value was it timely was it affordable, and the IRS for those who have not seen a form has come up with their own language and with letters and numbers to communicate that. And again, we’ll take a look at one of those forms in a few slides. And you can understand why some people are overwhelmed by this because there’s a lot of information that goes into this language about the offer and affordability and the timeliness and what type of plans and the tiers of coverage and so forth. So we’re talking about why eligibility matters. When you hire somebody who’s full time, you have an obligation to offer them coverage within ninety days. Some employers, I should back up a bit, some employers choose not to offer a coverage and then they have a penalty for not offering coverage and they know that upfront and then maybe that’s their strategy. Regardless of whether or not that is a company decision to offer coverage or not, all of it really matters is that the offer of coverage and how you report it is based off of eligibility. And that’s what’s going to get reported on the ten ninety five C forms. And that attributes to any kind of penalty exposure. So even if your strategy is to not offer coverage and then take that A penalty, and that’s the company decision, you still have to report because then that’s how that penalty is assessed. And then being compliant with offering coverage and reporting goes a long way, that eligibility goes a long way to determine who you need to offer coverage to and also protecting you in the event that employee goes to the marketplace at a time that they were not an eligible employee for you. So again, determining the eligibility and who you need to report on really goes into how who’s full time, when did their eligibility begin, was the coverage offer timely and was the offer affordable? So, have a workforce that has variable hour employees, you’ve hired folks as non full time or part time, and you are in industries that may lead to more of a variable hour workforce, it is important for you to have a consistent process to track, to determine if they are benefit eligible. And there are regulations for how you track them. I like to say there’s a regulation for really every part of this whole process. Where I see a lot of mistakes happening is with people who don’t understand some of the regulations about doing benefit eligibility tracking when they’re doing it on their own. A couple of those would be not knowing how to take account for somebody who terms and is rehired, because there’s a rule parity around that. If they’re gone for thirteen weeks, what do you do? Another, I would say big issue that I see is employers should think that once they get to open enrollment, they can look to see who is eligible at that time, not taking into consideration an employee who is in their first year of, you know, first measurement period. And there’s a certain first year path that they do, it’s called a new variable hour employee, if initial measurement period, I should say for a new variable hour employee, I see a lot of mistakes around that. So if you are doing this manually, you should really look into the regulations to make sure that you’re doing it accurately. But there is, tracking is typically done for anybody who is not hired as full time. The IRS says that there are two ways to do that with a look back measurement period or a monthly measurement period. And having the documentation and knowing that, you know, you’re following the regulations is important. This is going to determine who is benefit eligible. It’s going to determine who you need to report on. So not only does it help determine the benefit eligibility so that you can have confidence that you’re offering an eligible employee at the proper time, but also goes to protect you in the event that an employee who was not benefit eligible, but they still were your employee, they go to the marketplace and you would get a two twenty six letter, then you can defend yourself that they weren’t actually eligible at that time. So again, tracking, would recommend if you do have variable hour employees, and in certain industries that you are confident in the process, either you’re using a software like ours that does it seamlessly, or another software, or if you’re doing it manually, just understand the regulations of that. And, you know, a big thing, I don’t know, probably should have said this, but the IRS says that full time is thirty hours, you know, average of thirty hours or one hundred and thirty hours a month, which was a big change, you know, with the Affordable Care Act when everybody typically thought forty hours was, you know, full time before that. And again, it may not be necessary if you have a if you hire everybody as full time, expectation is that, you know, you have a pretty consistent workforce and everybody works full time. Not saying that if you have a couple of part timers who come in every Tuesday and Thursday for a couple hours just to get a project or two done, I wouldn’t say that you need to do benefit eligibility tracking, you know, in those situations, you would know your workforce best, but you know, it’s not always necessary to do benefit eligibility tracking. Just depends on, you know, how confident you are in, you know, that nobody would average thirty hours and obviously knowing your workforce and when you hire somebody and when you make that offer and so forth and so on. We’re big on compliance And while you think, okay, it’s July, and I really only maybe focus on this one time a year, keeping these things in top of mind can go a long way to providing confidence, peace of mind, maybe making your filing or reporting process a lot smoother. So just kind of keeping these questions top of mind, how are you doing your tracking eligibility if you need it? Which safe harbors are you using? And we’re going talk a little bit about safe harbors, but that’s ensuring that you’re offering affordable coverage. And if you’re not having conversations with your broker about, am I offering affordable coverage? You should be. The IRS changes an aspect of that yearly with putting out a federal poverty line amount. We’re going cover that in a couple of slides, but also a percentage to use the W-two or rate of pay safe harbor. So if you’re not considering that at your, you know, every renewal, you should be. Also, you know, understanding a little bit about what these code combinations mean and what you’re actually reporting to the IRS. Just having a general knowledge of that is something I would consider to be important. I mean, have a indicator code kind of calculator in our software that somebody can punch in what the codes are on lines fourteen and sixteen, because together those codes tell a story. And so what we do is help employers with knowing what those actual code combinations mean, what they’re reporting to the IRS. It goes to confidence and peace of mind. And then also, you know, nobody wants to receive an IRS penalty letter, but you could be reporting every year and you’re checking that box and that’s great. But you could be also offering the best coverage, affordable, timely, MEC and minimum value. All the things that you should be doing could be buttoned up and that does not prevent an employee from going to the marketplace and getting a premium tax credit. So that does not prevent you from getting a notice. You could be innocent. And a lot of times people are, but make sure that in your office, in your operation, somebody sees a notice from the IRS that don’t ignore it. It’s very important that you’re answering these in a timely manner. The IRS tends to be pretty reasonable where they get to be, you know, like the hornet’s nest is when they don’t get responses. And so just have a way to know that, you know, anything from the IRS coming, you know, don’t ignore it. We’ve seen escalations of that because, you know, people not purposely ignored it, but mail gets thrown away. So just make sure that that’s top of mind and that’s a way to stay in compliance. Perfect. And I will go ahead and launch our next poll. Okay, do you have a process in place to automatically track employees approaching ACA eligibility? You have a fully automated tracking system, partially automated, it’s a manual process, or no process in place. Out of the ACA, this is probably the trickiest thing, Stacy, of the tracking? It’s one of them. I would say for sure, definitely. It would be the most complicated because of all the regulations that go into it, especially new variable hour employees in their first initial measurement period compared to somebody who’s ongoing and maybe in their second or more. Okay, so seventeen percent are fully automated, forty two percent partially automated, fifteen percent manual process, and thirty one percent no process in place. Well, maybe they don’t have a process in place because they have all full time. Yeah, exactly. Know, that doesn’t consider them in the question. And fully automated, I would assume those are probably our clients I fully automated. But, you know, again, there are some softwares out there that are able to account for that as well. So I would just say that, you know, if you know that you have variable hour employees, just make sure that, you know, in consideration of staying in compliance that you just take a look at it and, you know, make sure that, you know, everything’s buttoned up. And I like to say buttoned up, but anyway, just make sure it’s buttoned up for your purposes. So, when we talk about, and I know this might not apply to everybody, but we talk about there’s a regulation for everything. There’s regulations around how you can track for benefit eligibility, And there’s a look back measurement period and a monthly measurement period. And so a look back allows employers to determine a set amount of time that they’re going to track the hours to determine eligibility. And how long you determine that measurement period is how long that you need to offer coverage if they achieve eligibility. And that would be called a stability period. And aside from benefit eligibility tracking and just keeping up with the hours and that process and making sure you follow the regulations, I think this is where probably the second most complicated piece of Affordable Care Act is keeping up with measurement period, administrative period and stability periods because they’re ongoing and they are overlapping year after year. And so having some visibility into that is important. So a look back measurement period, this was obviously all established with the laws, can be between three and twelve months. How long you determine to measure them will affect how long are, their eligibility is fixed, that you need to offer coverage to them for that specific amount of time. It’s a stability period. I think this is best suited for people who have a lot of seasonality and that they have those peaks and valleys. And we saw at least initially when this all back in twenty thirteen, twenty fourteen that employers were choosing a twelve month measurement period because it was a longer time for the employer, employee, I’m sorry, to have to achieve, you know, eligibility over a longer amount of time. And it just kind of helped keep up with, you know, the twelve month versus the twelve month stability period and measurement period. It just kind of helped kind of keep track of that from an organizational purpose. So again, just know that the regulations for this, If we can help, let us know. And our system does this automatically, you know, and helps and gives visibility into that. But just know that there’s regulations for how you approach this. But this is information on using the look back measurement period. Next, oh, I’m sorry, monthly measurement period. So, one is a little bit different in that, you know, you’re looking at the hours worked in a month, monthly measurement period. And I would say it’s best suited for just more consistent employees with more consistent schedules, more of a stable workforce. It’s a little bit more of a straightforward approach. You’re looking at the hours worked and determining if they achieved the one hundred and thirty hours. What can be challenging about the monthly measurement period is that you can have employees eligible one month and then come off of eligibility if their hours dip and go back once. So administratively, can be a little bit more challenging. You don’t have that longer stability period that you have with using the look back. But again, the IRS has offered that both meet the compliance regulations. It’s going to be, you know, up to individual employers, companies to determine what best suits them, but both meet the compliance requirements. And so again, just knowing the pros and the cons of doing the monthly measurement period, we satisfy both in our software. But this again, you know, is more suitable for certain employers over a look back measurement period. Okay, now we’re going to go over common errors and penalties. So this is a ten ninety five C form and this is, you know, the language that, you know, I kind of alluded to the IRS, you know, has come up with these codes of, this language of letters and numbers to tell the story. It is populated for each benefit eligible employee. It tells the story about the whole year using this language. If you look at line fourteen, that typically tends to be about the offer of coverage, what type of plan was it, net minimum value. Line fifteen is about the required contribution that that employee was required to pay each month for the lowest cost plan for employee only coverage, and then line sixteen tends to be about the safe harbor. So is it based the affordability, it’s telling whether or not you offered affordable coverage and which affordability safe harbor that it met. Are you meeting the federal poverty line, the rate of pay or the W-two. Now, in this example, when you look at, and this is coming from a demo account, and know, SyncStream was founded in New Orleans, so our demo is called the Saints crew, And this is a Saints player, Mario Davis. So, if this was to Mario Davis’s, you know, real ten ninety five C form, he was not employed until he was not hired, I should say until March, because this letter combination of 1H2A means that he was not an employee, therefore no offer was made. And then if you look at March through May, a 1H2D means, yeah, he was our employee, but he was in a waiting period, limited non assessment period is what the IRS calls it. So technically, why is this important is technically if DeMario had gone to the marketplace between January and May, this employer, the Saints, would not, you know, have to pay a penalty because he wasn’t their employee And then he was in a waiting period and the IRS allows that waiting period to be ninety days first of next calendar month. That’s why this accuracy is so important. So then when we go to June, he’s eligible and he was offered MAC minimum value coverage and he enrolled. And so that’s what a 1E2C means and he was required to pay one hundred and fifty dollars a month. Now, if he would have waived coverage is where you would see a safe harbor code come in. But because they enrolled, don’t ask, that’s how the IRS came up with this, that if he enrolls, it shows a one E2C, they want to know that he was enrolled. And then that one hundred fifty does attribute to like how much he was required to pay. So in from June through what have we looking at October, he was enrolled. Now you see that this in this example, his contribution changed in October because their plan renewed in October. And that’s where you’ll see that right above October and November, the IRS wants to know what’s the plan start month. With their renewal, they must have had an increase in what employers were required to pay for employee only coverage for the lowest cost plan. So, now DeMario is paying one hundred and seventy five dollars but then he termed in November, and that 1H2B is an indication of that he termed that month and then no longer employed with them in December. So that goes into the, you know, if you can imagine like having tracked employees that, you know, weren’t benefit eligible for a few months, and then they became eligible because they achieved through their look back measurement period or their monthly measurement period, they achieved eligibility. You can see how complicated that could be through this process to keep up with all of those different pieces of that employee’s journey throughout the year. This is a self funded plan. So that means part three is populated. Ms. Is wrong. Was, know, but he was not covered all twelve months. I’ll have to change that because it should show that he was only covered June through October. And this is not the system’s fault, this is totally my fault because I kind of created a scenario where I can talk through the different codes and I didn’t catch that. So, I’m saying like, we would see that he would be covered June, July, you know, those check months would be the months that he was covered. And any covered dependents would be populated on Part three. Right. I like this example. Yeah. All So you can see there could be a lot that goes wrong in doing this. Incorrect offer codes, you know, any kind of code combination that, you know, any kind of, you know, error could be around the wrong codes, saying somebody was an employee when they weren’t, or, you know, there could be codes that you’re saying that you’re not offering MEP and minimum value, but you really did. There could be codes that say that you didn’t all offer a family, all the way up every tier through family plans. I mean, we’ve seen it all really. There could be so many things that could go wrong. The IRS has about seventy different code combinations that are acceptable. And while they would be acceptable to the IRS, they may not be a depiction of what your scenario really is, because you don’t want to say that you’re not offering that coverage or you’re not, you’re not offering back a minimum value coverage when you really are. And you won’t want to say that you’re only offering employee only coverage when you really offered all the way up tiers all the way up to a family plan. So that’s why you know there’s a method in the madness to get like all the information about the plan and get the information about the offer and get the information about an employee’s hire date, the waiting period of know when they’re eligible because all of that goes into the forms. And then of course, skipping a line sixteen and having a blank in line sixteen would mean that you’re reporting that you didn’t offer affordable coverage, which again would then set yourself up for some penalties, especially if an employee goes to the marketplace. I would say something else would be code combinations that conflict and really don’t make sense. That would probably come back as an error from the IRS because there are code combinations that just don’t make any sense and that are not acceptable by the IRS. So make sure that you know all the data that goes into this. Obviously, higher higher dates, eligibility, terms, those are important. You know, if you don’t have a plan in place to that kind of gives you some insight or visibility into potential penalties through the process, then you do have a lot of, you know, heartache with two twenty six j letters and maybe you should look at you know looking at a different software or a different vendor or a different process. Because there’s ways to manage this throughout the year so nothing comes as a surprise at the end of the year. Affordability looking, you know, speaking with your broker, knowing who your lowest cost employees pay, you know, who what your lowest cost employees paid, or your your employee who’s, you know, being paid the lowest amount from a W-two or a rate of pay. And knowing that and knowing whether or not your hard contribution is meeting one of the affordability safe harbors, knowing what the codes mean, and maybe you’re using a payroll company, but it’s still important. Like they’re not gonna take the liability of what’s reported on your behalf. So having some general knowledge of what those codes mean can go a long way. Making sure you’re buttoned up before you send that on to the IRS. And so, again, like I say, there’s a little attention throughout the year could go a long way to prevent surprises. And those surprises could be a hot mess trying to report, or those surprises could be potential penalties when you’re going to report. So again, a little attention which, congratulations, you’re at this webinar. You are giving it some attention already and it’s July. So that’s a good first step. Affordability. So the IRS has a regulation for everything. They obviously want to make sure it’s affordable. So it’s what is required for an employee, what an employee is required to pay for employee only coverage for the lowest cost plan. And the IRS determines a federal poverty line limit each year. And then they also determine a percentage so that you can look at the w two or the rate of pay and determine based on what that required contribution is whether or not that’s affordable coverage. And so I think we’re going to talk about that in a little bit more detail in the next few slides. And again, having conversations with your broker at your renewal is important. So again, the federal poverty line, not easy to achieve for a lot of employers. I mean, because I think in the last few years, it’s really been around one hundred. It kind of varies every year, but like one hundred and three to one hundred and ten in that range every year, what an employee is required to pay if it’s that or below. And so it’s tough, you know, with rising health care costs and everything it’s tough for a lot of employers to meet the federal poverty line level safe harbor. So then it’s really looking at the rate of pay or the W two and so the rate of pay is typically more used when you have salaried employees, And the W-two is more used with, obviously, did I say, okay, I’m sorry, rate of pay with more hourly, W-two with more salary. And it is appropriate to be able to use different safe harbors for different classifications of employees within your company. So that can happen a lot. So you can take that into consideration if you have an hourly workforce versus a salary workforce. You may be applying two different safe harbors across the company in those scenarios. And we’re doing that calculation automatically in our software. If we’re getting rate of pay through benefit eligibility tracking, or if somebody has some challenges with affordability, then we’re looking at that and monitoring that for our clients throughout the year. So again, it’s important just to have that know what the monthly, I mean, I’m sorry, the yearly, percentage might be this year, it’s nine point nine six with a little caveat. It does matter if you have a calendar year plan or an off calendar year plan. So you want to take that into consideration as well. Next. Again, I think we’ve already said, you know, with the federal poverty line, it’s just employers, if they’re able to offer that, they want simplest administration, but they really are, you know, offering a contribution, employee are paying about one hundred, one hundred and ten or less, each month for employee only coverage. And then the rate of pay would naturally kind of apply to more hourly employees who are reporting this monthly though. So, the event that, you know, they have a wage change, you know, that you can account for that. And then the BOTS one W-two wages, a challenge of that is that you don’t have that, you know, final number until January and the year is already over. But if you are taking a look at the lowest cost paid employee, then knowing what the percentage is each year, working with your broker on finding an employee contribution that meets those safe harbors is a good strategy to provide peace of mind that you’re offering affordable coverage. Okay, just best and I know, I mean, you know, you’re going to get, I guess, if you can request these slides that you can use these, you know, for kind of like a checklist for you. But again, having those conversations to know which safe harbor you’re likely apply, review affordability with your broker. I would say, you know, make sure that you know where maybe your pain points are and if it’s transitioning from a part time to a full time employee, knowing that could be some vulnerability. Keeping good records, and that’s just when somebody was eligible, it’s a good idea to keep copies of when they waived coverage as well. Just knowing where you have vulnerabilities and pain points and just maybe addressing that strategically before you get to where you’re in non compliance. Really don’t want financial impact or an administrative impact, especially when the IRS is a couple of years behind on things. And I’ll preach and I know it’s not in the slides, but it is vitally important that you keep receipt IDs and your forms from every year. And if you are moving from one payroll company or one software who’s been doing this to another, don’t forget to grab that information in the transition to a new software, because there isn’t a database that you can go in to make sure that you filed a particular year. There’s not a database that you can go and find your receipt ID. And we get a lot of panicked calls from people who ask us if we could, because we filed with the IRS, can you go see if I did this with XYZ company, my payroll company a few years ago? No. Keep your records and keep that, especially if you’re moving software because you would lose access to that. That’s a very good point. Accurate data drives accurate reporting, peace of mind, confidence, eligibility impacts reporting requirements, knowing the regulations around variable hour tracking, making sure you’re accounting for all of the different regulations through that process, being proactive and planning for offering affordable coverage, what that required contribution is, knowing which safe harbor you would be applying. And then, I would say most ACA penalties are preventable. You may get notices and you are completely innocent. But at that point, having the documentation and all of that, to be able to easily defend yourself from penalty without having to cause a whole lot of additional cost with the administrative burden. And our very last poll before we wrap up. What’s your next step after today’s session? You’re going to review your ACA processes internally, look into tools and solutions, discuss internally with your team, no immediate next steps, or are you interested in more information, and we’ll get with you? I’ll just keep this up as people answer, but I won’t go over the answers. Okay. You know, we have a lot of resources on our website. We have these monthly webinars. I think we have some checklists that can help you stay on top of compliance. We have some great blogs about, you know, what the codes mean, how to address penalty letters. So, and we’re always willing to have a conversation and I think it might come up in the next couple of slides, but we also have a compliance team that helps employers who are using their payroll platform, but they need help with two twenty six letter responses, or they forgot to file one year in between a broker change or a payroll, you know, a software change. So, we really can, you know, help any employer, even if you’re not using us for the actual reporting or filing, but you need compliance assistance or penalty letter assistance, anything like that. I mean, we have, you know, I’d to say from start to end, we can help throughout the whole process. Again, we help employers through benefit eligibility tracking. If you don’t need benefit eligibility tracking and you just need the codes to be done, we help employers with that. We can help no matter what payroll software platform you’re on, if you’re doing it manually. Most of our team has been in ACA since the early years, twenty fifteen being the first year of reporting. Any compliance support that you would need, we can help and obviously, you know, our passion for ongoing education, why we do this on a monthly basis. So, we like to, you know, we’re passionate about it and we like to share our knowledge. Okay, and that wraps up our webinar. So, please type in your questions to either the chat or the Q and A, and we will be happy to answer those questions. I do have the QR code on this slide for next month’s Avoiding the Top Five Employer Mistakes, led by our ACA Compliance Director, Kelly Smith. And some of the resources you have a couple in the chat and as Stacy was alluding to earlier, our year round checklist. We have the blog QR code here It just tells you what you should be doing from month to month. One question. Regarding who has to report, if a group has ten employees but switch from fully insured to a balanced funded plan, which the carriers calls it but it’s under self funded, does this apply? Yeah, you would have to report. Now you can check with your carrier, sometimes carriers are taking care of the B form. So, showed the ten ninety five C form, that’s for applicable large employers with the whole notion of, you know, month, you know, off reporting on a monthly basis. The B form for those non applicable large employers, it’s a little simpler, it actually looks like part three of the ten ninety five C form in that you’re reporting only on employees that enrolled and their covered dependents, and it’s the ten ninety five B form, you can talk to your carrier or your broker, sometimes the carrier is taking care of that, but we also can help in the event that they don’t. But yes, you would be required to report when you’re on a plan like that. Okay, we’ll give it another minute in case another question rolls in. Thanks for joining today. Thanks for giving attention to the ACA in July. It’s a good first step. And, you know, let us know if we can help. Someone says I don’t see any downloads in the chat. Put them in before it started, so maybe you can’t see it. I’ll include that in the email I’m going to send tomorrow with the recording. I’ll include those links. But of course everyone should have my email from me inviting everyone. You can always reach out to me and I’ll just send it your way today. And again, thank you. As Stacy said, thanks for spending a hot July summer day going over the ACA. We appreciate it and you’re here. You’re on the right track for, you know, this is I know a lot of people like to do this one and done at the end of the year and it’s stressful and the perfect way to do this is to do a little bit every single month. We appreciate that and we look forward to seeing you next month. Thank you so much. Thank you.
