The 1095 Forms

There are some pretty important forms you need to add to your tax season repertoire: the Affordable Care Act 1095 Forms.

Think of these forms as the W-2s of the health care coverage the ACA requires you to offer and report on each year. You’ll report certain information about the coverage you offered to each person you offered that coverage and with the IRS on these 1095 Forms.




Form 1095-C, Employer-Provided Health Insurance Offer and Coverage
We’re foregoing alphabetical order to better explain how these 1095 forms work. Form 1095-C is the form that’s completed by all Applicable Large Employers (ALEs) for their full-time employees. ALEs are employers with 50 or more full-time employees who are thereby subject to the ACA’s employer shared responsibility provisions.

To complete Form 1095-C, you’ll need:

• Employee information (name, SSN, address)
• Employer information (name, EIN, address, contact info)
• The Plan Start Month for each employee
• Offer of Coverage Codes for each employee
• The Employee Share of Lowest Cost Monthly Premium per month
• Spouse and dependent information (name, SSN/birth date, months covered)
• Section 4980H Safe Harbor Codes (if applicable)

Form 1095-B, Health Coverage
Form 1095-B is filed by everyone else who provides health care coverage throughout the year. That means small businesses, insurance agents, certain government agencies, and anyone else who provided minimum essential coverage to taxpayers.

To complete Form 1095-B, you’ll need:

• Filer information (name, EIN, address, phone number, and contact info)
• The total number of 1095-B Forms you’re filing
• Recipient information (name, SSN/birth date, address)
• Coverage type, broken down by month

If you’re using Form 1095-B to report Employer-Sponsored Coverage or coverage provided by another user, you’ll also need that other entity’s name, EIN, address, and contact information.

Form 1094, Transmittal Form
Each Form 1095 comes with its very own Form 1094 (B or C). This is the transmittal form that summarizes the 1095 return it’s accompanying to the IRS. That’s right, this one just goes to the IRS, not your employees/recipients.

When you e-file with ExpressACAForms, we’ll automatically create your 1094 Form for you based on the information that generates your 1095 Forms, all of which are IRS-authorized and made ready to e-file immediately. Check out our site to learn more about these and our various other features, all of which are designed to make your ACA filing as fast and simple as possible.


Questions? Just give us a call! We’re available by phone (704-839-2270) and live chat Monday through Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. EST, and by email 24/7 at support@ExpressACAForms.com.

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Understanding ACA Form 1095-B

When we talk about the information returns associated with Affordable Care Act, we tend to get hung up on Form 1095-C. It makes sense: Form 1095-C is the form Applicable Large Employers file and they’re the “insurance providers” going through the most changes thanks to the ACA. (And “most change” tends to mean “most attention.”)

That’s why we’re taking this post to talk exclusively about Form 1095-B!

Purpose of the Form
Form 1095-B, Health Coverage, is used to report information to the IRS and taxpayers about the minimum essential coverage of health insurance provided by the filer.

And in case you need a reminder: minimum essential coverage (or MEC) is the least amount of coverage legally required for taxpayers to have each year. While it’s the individual taxpayer’s responsibility to make sure they have coverage that meets MEC, it’s also the responsibility of insurance providers to offer MEC plans as set by the ACA.

Who Needs to File Form 1095-B
Generally, every person that provides MEC to individuals during the calendar year must file Form 1095-B to report the coverage. This does exclude certain employers (ALEs) and government employers who are subject to the employer shared responsibility provisions and therefore must file Form 1095-C.

In other words, health insurance issuers and carriers for most health insurance coverage, including individual market coverage and insured coverage sponsored by employers, as well as small employers need to file Form 1095-B for each covered individual each year.

When to File
If you need to file Form 1095-B with the IRS, you must do so at the beginning of the year following the year you offered coverage. And how you plan to file determines when you’ll need to file.

If you’re sending in paper copies to the IRS, you must submit Form 1095-B, along with its transmittal form, Form 1094-B, by February 28 (or 29). If you plan to e-file, you have until March 31. Keep in mind that if your due date ends up falling on a weekend or legal holiday, the deadline is automatically extended to the next business day.

And speaking of “automatically extended,” you can get an automatic 30-day extension of time to file your 1095-B forms if you file Form 8809 with the IRS by your original deadline.

And How to File
The more traditional way to file your ACA return is to mail it in each year. While the IRS recommends everyone e-file, you really only have to if you have more than 250 forms to file. So if you’re planning for traditional, mail Form 1094-B and your 1095-B forms by your deadline to:

• Department of the Treasury, Internal Revenue Service Center, Austin, TX 73301
• If your principal business is in: Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, or West Virginia
• Department of the Treasury, Internal Revenue Service Center, Kansas City, MO 64999
• If your principal business is in: Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Oklahoma, Oregon, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Utah, Washington, Washington, D.C., Wisconsin, or Wyoming

Of course, if you’re looking for a faster, easier, more secure way to file, then you should e-file with ExpressACAForms! With ExpressACAForms, you don’t have to fill out each individual form by hand before mailing it in, which can leave you susceptible to human error and at the mercy of the postal system. Instead, just upload the the ACA information you have using our bulk upload spreadsheet or one of your own, review the forms our program creates for you, and securely e-file them directly with the IRS.

If you have any other questions regarding Form 1095-B or e-filing your ACA return, give us a call! We’re always happy to help. We’re available at (704) 839-2270 and through live chat on our website Monday through Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m ET and we offer 24/7 customer assistance via email at support@ExpressACAForms.com!

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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.

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E-file Your ACA Return for Just 10¢ a Form

Unless you’ve already filed your Affordable Care Act Forms 1094 and 1095 the old fashioned way by sending in paper forms to the IRS, you’re probably looking for an ACA e-filing service. Something you may experience in this hunt as an ACA filer in 2016, the first year of ACA filing (reporting tax year 2015), is a wide range of costs for seemingly similar e-filing services.

Because ExpressACAForms was created by a team of IRS-authorized e-filing experts, we’re able to offer fast and easy ACA e-filing through the program for a fair, competitive price. At ExpressACAForms, we generate and verify your ACA return at a base price of $499 per EIN and securely e-file the return for just 10 cents a form!

For that price, you have access to all of these amazing ACA services:

• Flexible employer/employee data capture
• Safe and secure ACA data generation
• TIN verification
• Built-in error checks
• Audit assistance
• Printable ACA Form 1094 and 1095 PDFs
• Expert, US-based support

And with ExpressACAForms, there’s a 100% money back guarantee, so there’s no risk to giving it a try.

Questions about getting started? Give us a call Monday through Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. EDT at (704) 839-2270, or send us an email anytime to support@ExpressACAForms.com.

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ACA Form 1095 Corrections Made Easy with ExpressACAForms

A lot of ACA filers are finding out the hard way that the IRS’s AIR e-filing system isn’t the most user-friendly, especially when it comes to making any corrections your ACA return may require. Now, ExpressACAForms is here to tell you about an easier way, because the last things you need to deal with are even more errors due to confusing IRS jargon.

ExpressACAForms Fixes the Way You Fix Your ACA Forms
If you use the IRS’s AIR e-filing system to e-file your 1095 Forms and make an error, you may need a decoder to fix it - and that’s not an exaggeration. If your form is rejected for even the simplest of errors, your entire return will be sent back in one large file, leaving you to sift through the IRS coded document for the error in question. THEN, you have to figure out how to fix it and retransmit it.

If you e-file with ExpressACAForms and your form is rejected, we’ll intercept this IRS document and decipher it for you, delivering you easy-to-follow instructions to fix the error(s) causing your rejection. You can then retransmit your return at no additional cost to you. Do this as many times as you need, although if you’re e-filing with ExpressACAForms, you shouldn’t need too many.

So What Can You Fix on Form 1095?
With ExpressACAForms, even if you didn’t e-file your original return with us, you can correct employee information, offer and coverage details, and the details of other covered individuals on Forms 1095-B and 1095-C.


There’s no time like the present to get started e-filing your ACA return (it is due June 30, after all), and the easiest way to do that is with ExpressACAForms. Create an account today, and if you have any questions, give us a call at (704) 839-2270 or send us an email to support@ExpressACAForms.com.

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How Full-Service E-filing Works with ExpressACAForms

When we’re helping people set up their accounts with ExpressACAForms, we’re frequently asked how this full-service solution works, and what exactly is included in the “full” part of the service. We’ll we’re here to tell ya:


The Full-Service Process
When you begin your full-service ACA e-filing process, it’s understandable to wonder how that process will go. Here’s how in five easy steps:

• Create your ExpressACAForms account
• Provide your basic employer details and upload the employee health benefit details you’ve tracked over the year.
• Sit back and relax as the program works to create your return.
• When you get an email alerting you your return is ready, log back into your account to review and approve your forms.
• Click the big, green button to securely transmit your return directly to the IRS.

That’s it. We’ll send you an email when your return has been processed and let you know if it was accepted or rejected. In the event it was rejected, ExpressACAForms will take you step-by-step through correcting and retransmitting your return until it’s accepted.

What Else is Included?
So that’s nice: the majority of your ACA filing requirement (filling out the forms) is taken care of with ExpressACAForms’s full-service process. But we didn’t want to stop there. The full-service treatment usually means a VIP treatment, right? So to make you feel very important, we also included in ExpressACAForms these awesome features that help make sure your forms are filed efficiently and without error.

Not to Mention…
With your ExpressACAForms account comes access to some of the best customer support in the nation. If you have any questions or need help with your return, just give us a call at (704) 839-2270 Monday through Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. EDT. We also offer 24/7 assistance at support@ExpressACAForms.com.

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ExpressACAForms E-filing Features

When you choose to e-file your ACA return with ExpressACAForms, you’re choosing to file with the best of the best. As ExpressTruckTax, ExpressTaxExempt, and ExpressIRSForms have proven, the team behind the Express e-filing line knows what we’re doing, and we can help get your first ACA return filed as easily and quickly as possible.

Our experience as IRS-authorized e-file providers has provided us with some ideas that help make quick and easy e-filing happen. When you sign up to e-file with ExpressACAForms, you automatically have access to all of these amazing features:

• Full-service ACA Filing: In other words, with the exception of you providing your ACA information then reviewing and approving your return, we take care of everything else (creating the forms, transmitting them to the IRS, checking for errors, etc.).
• Automatic TIN Verification: As ExpressACAForms generates your return based on your ACA information, it’s also double checking your data against IRS records to make sure the Taxpayer Identification Numbers (EINs, SSNs, etc.) in your forms match the person or business with whom they're associated.
• Bulk Upload: With ExpressACAForms, you upload all of your ACA data at once, exactly as you have it, whether that’s in an Excel spreadsheet or on completed IRS-created PDFs. Then sit back as the program puts together your 1094 and 1095 forms for you.
• ACA Corrections and Re-transmittals: If for any reason your return comes back rejected, ExpressACAForms will take you step by step through the process of fixing the errors and retransmitting your return as quickly as possible to keep you from incurring any IRS fines.
• Printable ACA Forms: Once your return has been transmitted to the IRS, you’ll have the option to print recipient copies of your completed 1095 forms to mail out, as well as any other forms from your return to keep for your records.

So what are you waiting for? Get started e-filing with ExpressACAForms today to see how easy it is! If you have any questions along the way, we’re here Monday through Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. EDT at (704) 839-2270 and 24/7 at support@ExpressACAForms.com.

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ExpressACAForms: The Features

At ExpressACAForms, we’ve worked hard to create the best program for e-filing your Affordable Care Act forms. After all, this is the first time anyone’s filing these forms, and you only get one time to make a first impression, right?

Part of what makes ExpressACAForms such a user-friendly program are all of the great features we’ve included to help you e-file with unprecedented ease. Allow us to take this blog post to tell you a little more about some of those features…

Cloud-Based Filing
At ExpressACAForms, our program is entirely cloud-based, which means there’s no need to download any software or forms. You can access your account and information anywhere you have access to an internet connection, through your desktop, tablet, or phone. But don’t think that means we’re any less safe - we’ve taken every precaution to make sure your information is secure and shared only with the IRS.

Bulk Uploading
Got a lot of recipients? Already have all of your recipients’ information in a spreadsheet? You really don’t wanna enter your information individually? Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered. When it comes time to enter your recipients into your forms, you’ll have the option to bulk upload all of their information at once. Use your own spreadsheet, or download the template we’ve made available.

Postal Mail
Before you start printing forms and stuffing envelopes one by one, why not use ExpressACAForms’s postal mail feature? For a small postal fee, you can have your recipient forms mailed for you by a member of our attentive support team.

Help Text and Videos
In the program, we’ve included a Help Text section to explain the ins and outs of the ACA forms. This text updates as you make your way through the forms so all the information you need is at your fingertips. We’ve also created a series of videos to help clear up any confusion you may have as you begin filing. You can check them out on our Youtube channel!

Customer Support
When we say we’re here for you, we mean it. At ExpressACAForms, we don’t just want to help you file your forms, we want to help you understand them. If you have any questions or need help along the way, give us a call. Or a live chat. Or an email. Our phone (704-839-2270) and chat support is available live Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. EST; and email support is available 24/7 at support@expressirsforms.com.

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