OREANDA-NEWS. March 30, 2016. As the industry leader in ACA compliance, Equifax is responsible for helping our clients manage eligibility, affordability, and IRS reporting for more than 18 million employees. Throughout the process of onboarding hundreds of clients, we have noticed 10 common challenges that are preventing employers from meeting reporting deadlines and maintaining overall ACA compliance:
  1. Incomplete or inconsistent data: Many employers are not tracking the data they need for reporting, such as leave of absence and offers/elections of coverage. Even if you are tracking all the necessary information, it is still likely that data quality issues will arise. In fact, 99% of our clients have experienced data quality issues.
  2. Access to third party data: Information required to complete Forms 1095 and 1094, such as benefits, COBRA, and retiree data, often must be obtained from a third party. Unfortunately, relying on those third parties to send the data can lead to significant delays.
  3. Configuration: It’s important to consider how you want to approach reporting and make decisions accordingly. For example, which companies are members of a controlled group or Applicable Large Employer? Other decisions that will have a significant impact include how you will handle employee designations, which affordability safe harbor to use for a group of employees, and which measurement method you’ll use to determine full-time status.
  4. Complex indicator codes: Deriving the correct indicator codes for 1095s is an extremely complex process due to the number of variables that may affect the final result. The codes can change from month to month depending on an employee’s status, hours worked, wages, enrollment in benefits, and many other factors. Updates in the regulations can also affect the logic required to populate the correct indicator codes.
  5. Post 1095/1094 planning: Most employers have been focused solely on meeting reporting deadlines and have not started thinking about what’s next. Many haven’t even considered how they will handle additional processes like form corrections, subsidy appeals, and fine disputes.