Full-Time employee, no employee benefits offered

[amburgermullen]

Jurisdiction

Tennessee

I am a full time employee for a hotel. No insurance benefits are offered for myself or any of my co-workers. The owner has 3 different hotels, all under different names. Can he get away with not offering insurance for anyone when in fact he does have enough employees to require it but just uses different names for each hotel?

 

[army judge]

Effective on January 1st, 2015, ALL employers with 50 or more full time equivalent (FTE) employees are required to provide health insurance coverage to full-time employees.

Should an employer CHOOSE not to provide the mandated coverage, a tax penalty must be paid by the employer to our overlords. That's just another crooked stake in an otherwise discombobulated law.

This is known as the employer mandate.

Employers with fewer than 50 FTEs are NOT subject to tax penalties for choosing not to offer health insurance coverage.

There is great confusion about the ACA.

In summation, an employer is mandated to provide health insurance.

Yet, the employer can make a choice.

Some employers comply, providing a health plan.

Other employers weight the costs of providing a health insurance plan against the purported tax penalty.

Whether any employer pays a tax penalty and refuses to offer health insurance benefits, as mandated, hinges upon a cost-benefits analysis.

In the mindset of some employers, paying the penalty might be cheaper than providing the health plan. Other employers might see it as a choice and a chance to poke our overlords in their eyes.

Sorry, mate, your employer apparently has decided to pay the penalty and do some poking.

 

[army judge]

Dirty little secret.
The penalty is triggered, generally, if an employee without coverage signs up for coverage through one of the vanishing ACA Marketplaces.

There are a couple of other triggers, although rarer.


Here are a few explanations describing how the employer penalty is applied:



How the Affordable Care Act affects small businesses



Employer Mandate | U.S. Chamber of Commerce


Employer Responsibility Under the Affordable Care Act



http://www.cigna.com/assets/docs/about-cigna/informed-on-reform/employer-mandate-fact-sheet.pdf

 

[cbg]

If he pays the appropriate tax to the Feds for not providing insurance, yes, he can.

 

[txls]

It also depends on the corporate structure of the three hotels.

 

[txls]

It also depends on the corporate structure of the three hotels.

as to whether he is "required" to offer insurance or face a potential penalty.

The penalty is currently set at $3000 per year. It can easily cost $6000 per year to insure employee, plus all of the administration that goes with it. The penalty won't be assessed on every employee.

 

[adjusterjack]

The owner has 3 different hotels, all under different names

That, in itself, is meaningless. You'll have to figure out if each hotel is operated as a separate business entity. You can figure that out by checking the records at your Secretary of State's website:

Business Entity Filings | Tennessee Secretary of State