The U.S. Treasury Department has announced that it will delay enforcement of the employer mandate (“pay or play”) requirements for one year. As a result, any penalties (also known as employer shared responsibility payments) will not apply until 2015.

This mandate requires businesses with 50 or more workers to provide health insurance coverage to employees. As a result, the administration will start enforcing the mandate in 2015, rather than January 1, 2014, in an effort to give businesses more time to prepare.

There will be additional changes tied to this delay, and the administration has stated that they will provide formal guidance within the next week.

Employee Benefit Advisors is working to understand the specifics surrounding this ruling, and will continue to provide updates through HR Advisor, our state-of-the-art human resources library which is a value added service available to our clients.