The Internal Revenue Service published guidance Tuesday for employers related to the one-year delay until 2015 in requiring information reporting about providing health coverage to their workers.
The hold-up means that employers with 50 or more workers will not be subject in 2014 to a $2,000 penalty for each full-time employee who was not offered minimum essential health coverage.
The postponement, announced July 2 by Mark Mazur, the Treasury Department's assistant secretary for tax policy, in a blog, is designed to get more feedback about how to simplify the new reporting requirements and for employers and insurers to develop and adapt their systems for collecting and reporting the needed data.
"Both the information reporting and the employer shared responsibility provision will be fully effective for 2015," the IRS said in its notice at its website.
Shared responsibility under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) means that the employer must offer affordable, minimum essential health benefits to its full-time employees or a shared responsibility payment, or a penalty may apply if any employees enroll in a qualified health plan and receive a premium tax credit.
The information reporting is critical to the administration of the employer's shared responsibility requirements that employees were offered employer-based health coverage and whether a full-time employee has received a premium tax credit on the exchange, the IRS noted.
The administration "encouraged" employers and insurers to voluntarily comply in 2014 with the information reporting once it releases the specific rules in order to test the process.
"Real-world testing of reporting systems and plan design through voluntary compliance for 2014 will contribute to a smoother transition to full implementation for 2015," the IRS said.
The delay through 2014 has no effect on the application of other aspects of the ACA, the tax agency said. And employers are also still expected to voluntarily move toward making health coverage affordable and available for their employees.
Shortly after the delay was announced, Republican members of the House Energy and Commerce Committee and its leadership requested documents from Treasury Secretary Jack Lew and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius about the administration's decision.
In letters to both secretaries, the lawmakers noted that communications and the decision-making progress "have not been disclosed publicly." It set a July 17 deadline for information about the delay and said that the delay "raises troubling questions" about the administration's efforts to put in place the ACA and whether the health insurance exchanges will be able to begin enrollment Oct. 1.
"The acknowledgment that a delay in the law's implementation is needed is completely at odds with previous public statements made by administration officials," the lawmakers said in the letter.