The House Committee on Small Business is soliciting the aid of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) regarding the agency’s enforcement of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) employer mandate.
Committee Chairman Rep. Steve Chabot (R-OH) recently forwarded correspondence to Acting IRS Commissioner David Kautter regarding the matter.
While the ACA exempts businesses with 50 or fewer employees from the employer mandate, businesses with 51 or more employees who work 30 or more hours a week were classified as applicable large employers and made subject to inflation-adjusted shared responsibility payments if they had not offered ACA qualified health insurance.
“While the IRS, like other federal agencies, is obligated to enforce the laws under its jurisdiction, this sudden change has caught and will catch many employers by surprise,” Chabot wrote. “After the Obama-era IRS failed to enforce the law for several years, these small businesses are now subject to random and abrupt collection of these payments by the IRS.”
The Committee maintains the ACA’s definition of large employers is out of line with the rest of the federal government, noting the Obama administration failed to enforce this rule for years.
The Committee said it has heard testimony from numerous small business employees and owners detailing the manner in which the ACA has cost jobs and opportunities in communities across America and needs to be repealed and replaced.