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Post-Election Tax Strategies for Contractors – Your Year-End Action Plan Revealed!
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Marcum’s team of health and employee benefits plan professionals has years of experience helping employers design cost-effective, market-driven benefits plans and resolve thorny compliance issues and other challenges – issues that can be extremely costly in both time and money if not handled properly.
Health and Benefits Plan Design
Almost no aspect of employment with your company is more highly scrutinized by potential employees than your health and benefits plans. When designing your plans, you need confidence that they’re comprehensive and competitive, enabling you to attract and retain the best talent possible. But, they also have to allow you to remain fiscally strong and stable.
Marcum’s experienced health and benefits team helps you choose the right plan for your business. And, the trusted advisors you work with at Marcum have the financial modeling skills to help you project plan performance and anticipated costs well into the future.
In addition, Marcum can help you design and establish a Section 125 cafeteria plan, enabling you to offer your employees a number of benefit alternatives for them to select from, and allowing employees to contribute pre-tax dollars to help pay for their share of the health care premiums. Marcum consultants can also assist you in analyzing and implementing one of the available tax advantaged methods that employers and employees can use to pay for out-of-pocket healthcare expenditures [flexible spending account, health savings account, health reimbursement account, small employer health reimbursement arrangement (QSEHRA)].
Health and Benefits Plan Compliance
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) and continually evolving healthcare-related regulations significantly increased the complexity of most companies’ compliance efforts. Marcum can make life easier for you in a number of ways:
If your organization has more than 50 full-time equivalent employees (FTEs), we can assist you with:
- Annual ACA compliance and responses to excise tax assessments (IRS Form 226J), including preparing and filing IRS Forms 1094 and 1095 for Applicable Large Employer (ALE). In addition, Marcum specializes in reporting requirements for self-insured health programs. Recently, the IRS has aggressively issued excise tax assessments to employers, threatening large penalties for not offering health insurance as required under ACA – known as 226J letters. We’ve helped employers accurately assess their situations and successfully file abatement requests within the 30-day window to escape penalties potentially ranging from $100K to as much as $2 million.
Fewer than 50 Full-Time Equivalent employees (FTEs)? In accordance with ACA rules and regulations, Marcum can help you:
- Accurately determine your actual number of FTEs. Employers with fewer than 50 FTEs are not required to comply with the terms of ACA. In addition, many employers aren’t aware they may be able to offer health insurance to some, but not necessarily all, of their employees. Marcum health and benefits consultants know the rules inside and out, and can help you explore the possibilities and how much the available options will cost your business.
In addition, Marcum Compensation and Benefits consultants regularly help employers avoid costly IRS penalties for late filing of Forms 5500 and establish wrap plans to make compliance easier.
- IRS penalties used to be $25 per day for late filers of Form 5500. These penalties have risen to $250 per day to a maximum of $150,000. Often, employers are unaware that if they have separate plans for health, vision and dental, they must file three separate 5500 forms—unless they’ve established a wrap plan, which calls for just one.
