Are You Prepared for Next Year's ACA Changes?

Hey, there! Remember this past Affordable Care Act filing season? Got it? Good. Now forget everything you knew about ACA filing.

Well, not everything. The basics are still mostly the same, but there are a lot of changes coming with the 2016 filing season, which begins in January. For starters, one of the biggest:

Date Changes
That’s right: this year (and forevermore), you won’t have the first six months of the year to get your ACA return just right. The IRS, in an attempt to relieve some of the first-time ACA filing stress for filers and themselves, extended the actual ACA deadlines this past year. Next year, they’ll be back in their rightful places: January 31 (for the recipient forms), February 28 (for paper filers), and March 31 (for e-filers).

No More Leniency
The IRS was pretty generous last year; in addition to extending the deadlines, they also operated under a more lenient late-filing policy. No such luck this year. Last year, the policy was if you could prove you made good faith efforts to file on time, your late filing penalties would be forgiven. This year, it’s the same as every other IRS deadline: you don’t file on time, you pay the fine.

Penalties Are Going Up
The penalties for not providing (or not providing enough) insurance are going up as well. The IRS had a few other safety nets in place this year as far as insurance offers were concerned - only having to offer to 70% of your employees rather than 95%, for example, as well as other safe harbor reliefs. This year, those begin phasing out. Since the whole point of the ACA is to make sure every taxpaying American has access to good health insurance, the penalties stand to get more severe the longer Applicable Large Employers don’t provide coverage.

But You’ve Still Got ExpressACAForms
But the good news is you’ve still got us! One of the frontrunners in ACA e-filing for the 2015 tax year, ExpressACAForms helps make your ACA filing and compliance easier than ever. And we’re around all year too, not just during ACA season, to help answer any questions or get you started with ExpressACAForms.

Give us a call. We’re in the office Monday through Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. ET, and our phone number’s (704) 839-2270. We also offer live chat assistance while we’re in the office and 24/7 email support (support@ExpressACAForms.com) for when we’re not.