If you are a benefit broker you might be in for a special 2015 Christmas surprise but not in a good way. A question for you:
- Did any of your clients use their payroll vendor to do this reporting? (answer is usually yes)
- Have you heard from these clients yet? (answer is usually no)
You need to know that you will hear from them very soon. Why? The reason is twofold.
First, the payroll vendor almost never has all of the information necessary to complete the reporting from a medical plan standpoint. Instead, they require their clients to enter that data and do not provide much support to assist them (unless you consider forwarding along the IRS regulations as ‘support’). The clients of course do not know how this all works…
Surprise! You as a broker end up doing the work to help your clients while the payroll vendor receives their compensation for ‘doing’ the ACA reporting.
Secondly, with many payroll vendors they require the employer to actually determine and enter the codes in lines 14 and 16 of form 1095-C. The employer of course thinks that they have paid someone else to do this reporting, so what are they doing? You guessed it – they are sending it back to their broker to do.
This is creating major issues for brokers because often times they made the referral for the payroll company to perform this reporting not understanding that the reporting requires much more benefits information that it does payroll information. Adding additional pressure, it is now late December 2015 and there are very few vendors in the marketplace still taking clients.
So what can you do about it?
- Determine which clients are using payroll vendors and call them immediately to make sure they have begun the process and understand everything that is required.
- Evaluate where you are in terms of your clients ….. and what will be needed to get their required information completed.
Need help? Contact us at customer support via the link above OR learn more about our ACA consulting services for groups have had had their ACA reporting completed by another vendor, by contacting support.