Escolar Documentos
Profissional Documentos
Cultura Documentos
6525
www.hrp.net
www.hrp.net
Pay as You Go
Only the employer can contribute to an HRA; employees cannot add to it by payroll deduction. There are no minimum or maximum "contributions," but amounts are fixed for as long as employers choose. The accounts are "notional," in other words; funds don't actually exist in a cash account but are disbursed by the employer to employees as they incur expenses covered under the arrangement. Unused account credits in one year can be rolled over into subsequent years.
www.hrp.net
Contributions are deductible for the employer and not taxable to the
employee, assuming funds are used for qualified medical expenses. The accompanying table from The Bailey Group, an employee benefits firm, illustrates how one employer used the HRA in conjunction with the health plan it was offering. The table shows higher deductibles result in higher employer credits to employees' HRA accounts.
www.hrp.net
www.hrp.net
www.hrp.net
In theory, if you are small enough for your employees to qualify to use the public exchange (under 100 employees in most states and 50 in some others, until 2017 when the limits come off), you could simply drop health plan coverage (without any punitive consequences if you fall under ACA's 50-employee threshold), boost employees' salaries to compensate for the loss of benefits, and send them to the exchanges in 2015.
www.hrp.net
www.hrp.net
Another approach would be to pay the minimum required amount directly to a private health exchange, which in turn would credit the amount to each employee's account, ensuring those dollars can only be used for health coverage. Private exchanges are not subject to any employee census limits. They are run by stand-alone exchange operators, as some large benefit consulting firms and some large health insurance carriers. Your payments to exchange operators are deductible to you, and non-taxable to employees.
www.hrp.net
Some private exchanges will offer more choices than others. Naturally,
those operated by insurance carriers would not include plans from their competitors. They do, however, include ancillary policies from other insurers which they don't offer themselves, such as vision, dental, and disability insurance. After you've crunched the numbers, the decision of whether or not to go the defined contribution route might ultimately depend on how your company views employee benefits, and the role of these benefits in attracting and retaining desirable employees.
www.hrp.net
E-mail : info@hrp.net
www.hrp.net