The IRS recently published finalized rules easing restrictions on health reimbursement arrangements (HRAs) to allow employers to provide their workers with tax-preferred funds to pay for the cost of health insurance coverage they buy in the individual market. The regulation is part of the Trump Administration’s commitment to deliver more health coverage choices to Americans.
The HRA rule should be extremely valuable to small businesses that have had a really hard time providing group health coverage. So hard, in fact, that the Kaiser Family Foundation Employer Health Benefits Survey recently reported that the percentage of businesses with 25 to 49 workers offering group coverage has fallen from 92% to 71% since 2010.
Two New Options Will Be Available
Effective January 1, 2020, employers will be able to help employees buy individual health insurance policies by offering two different tax free HRAs. The first is an Individual Coverage HRA, which can only be offered to similar classes of workers when a traditional group health plan is not currently available. Classes refer to groups of employees with similar circumstances, such as full-time, part-time, seasonal, salaried, temporary, etc. A class must include at least 10 employees for employers with fewer than 100 employees and 20 or more employees for employers of 200 or more workers.
The other option, an Excepted Benefits HRA, is designed to be offered with a traditional group health plan, although employees do not have to enroll in the health plan. The maximum annual benefit for an Excepted Benefits HRA is $1,800.
Tax-Preferred Benefits Can Extend to Millions
The new HRA rules will make it easier for small businesses to compete with larger organizations that provide high quality group health benefits. More importantly, the employees who buy individual health plans financed by a new HRA will receive the same tax advantages as those with traditional group coverage.
The Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services and Treasury estimate that HRA expansion will benefit as many as 800,000 employers and more than 11 million employees and family members, 800,000 of whom will have been previously uninsured. To learn more about these new HRAs as you begin your planning for 2020, contact your account representative at your convenience.
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