The new Affordable Care Act is set to provide American workers with access to quality, affordable health insurance from January 1st, 2014. However, there are still a number of questions as to how employers of temporary and project based workers are going to implement the legislation effectively – and much of the guidance around the act has yet to be determined.

The basic principle of the law is that companies who employ a full time staff of fifty (or part time staff working hours equivalent to that of 50 full time employees) must offer a medical plan that provides minimum essential health benefits to their full time employees or pay a tax penalty effective January 1, 2014.

Of course, this presents a challenge to the millions of American employers whose

full time workforce fluctuates throughout the year and who have project-based workers that might be full time one month and part time the next.

Taking the unpredictable schedules of project-based workers into account, the IRS recently made provision for a "look back" method to determine the full-time status of variable hour workers by averaging out the number of hours worked over a period of time. Still, in practice, the “look back” method could be an administrative headache for many employers.

To help, Emergent has prepared a summary white paper to guide managers of project-based workers through the changes. The paper will be updated with new information as and when fresh guidance is issued. If you’d like to receive a copy of this white paper, please send an e-mail with the subject line “ACA White Paper” to jstoppard@emergent.com  

As our family of companies is one of the largest employers of temporary and project-based workers in the United States, our team of legal and human resource experts will ensure that we keep on top of the latest guidance on the Affordable Care Act as it unfolds and will e-mail recipients of our white paper with updates as and when they happen.

If you have questions regarding the Affordable Care Act and how it pertains to your project based workforce please contact us for a no cost consultation at info@emergent.com or 855-250-5000.