Monthly Archives: July 2015

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Top ACA service vendors implement cutoff dates for new clients!

Posted on by ACA Reporting Service

Supreme Court Rules In Favor of Subsidies

Last Thursday (June 25th) the Supreme Court approved federal subsidies for health insurance under the Affordable Care Act. So the result? The ACA and all the mandates that go with it are not going anywhere soon. This is forcing employers to ask themselves the hard hitting question, “Are we ready for the ACA mandate”?

Are Employers Really Ready for ACA?

The reality is that the majority of employers have not yet begun to implement a strategy to comply with the new ACA compliance requirements. With the first reports being due by January 2016, many employers are left scrambling for a solution. According to a recent survey roughly 85 percent of mid-sized employers do not have a solution in place that will allow them to submit the required data. With all of this stress pressing down on employers, who will they turn to for the answers? That’s right, they are looking to their Benefit brokers and Payroll providers.

Time is running out for ACA Employer Reporting!

Yes, you read that correctly. The demand for ACA reporting services are growing so quickly that large technology vendors are saying “no more” to new clients after the cutoff dates. The service providers below have announced their cutoff dates for this year:

  • Equifax – August 2015
  • Equifax e(fx) – July 31, 2015
  • ADP National – Mid-July 2015
  • ADP Major – June 17, 2015

If you are still looking for a solution for your 6056 reporting and filing needs, then you are clearly running out of time. So not only is the timeline for implementation diminishing, but the availability of quality vendors is also dwindling.

Are you concerned yet? You don’t have to be. We are still here to help. Let our ACA specialists assist you in determining the reporting solutions that are right for you.

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Employee Benefit Brokers, ACA Reporting. Huge Prospecting Opportunity, OR Administrative Pitfall?

Posted on by ACA Reporting Service

The Million Dollar Question most employee benefit brokers are considering currently is should our firm try to perform this ACA reporting via an in-house technology solution that we purchase, or recommend having our clients use an outside vendor (such as us here at ACAReportingService.com)? The reality is that every operation is different, has different needs and have promised their clients different things.  Some brokers take a full service approach and look to take administrative burdens off of their clients.  Other brokers take a more consultative approach.  Neither avenue is ‘wrong’, but each works for different types of benefit broker operations.

Regardless of which option you choose, here are some things you should be thinking of as you consider the question:

  • Do we have the necessary resources internally to do a good job with this IRS form filing function?
  • Do we have the knowledge internally to complete the job well?
  • What approach will be most comfortable to our clients?
  • What are the security ramifications of the solution we choose?  (Knowing that having employee social security numbers compromised could be a disaster for your company.)
  • If you decide upon an outsourced solution, will you want to refer your clients to someone who also competes with your company as a benefit broker?
  • Do we need a solution to talk with employers about right now?  What is gained or lost by waiting longer into the year before bringing a good solution to the table?
  • How much time, money and staff will it take to deploy our solution?
  • Would our time be better spent prospecting for new clients during this time as opposed to trying to manage the process internally?
  • Which option is more profitable to our business?
  • What is the logic of the system we intend to use?  Are the codes and amounts for 1095c lines 14, 15 and 16 automatically generated?  Will our staff or clients be responsible for completing these fields without the assistance of smart technology to intuitively figure out what the codes should be?
  • How will customer service be handled for this whole process?

Often the reality for an employee benefit broker is that a mixture of different solutions makes best sense for their operation.  When it comes to full service ACA 6056 reporting and efiling, we are here to help. 

If you are interested to learn more about things you should be thinking of as a broker, click here for a prior blog post which has proven to be quite helpful.