09/13/2018

House Bill Would Delay Cadillac Tax

The bill also would modify the ACA’s employer mandate

The House may vote today on a bill to delay the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) so-called “Cadillac tax” on high-cost employer-provided health insurance for an additional year, until Jan. 1, 2023.

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Jackie Walorski (R-IN), would also modify the ACA’s employer mandate by changing the threshold for classifying a full-time employee from 30 hours per week to 40 hours. The employer mandate is an ACA requirement that employers with at least 50 employees offer health insurance to those who work at least 30 hours per week. The bill imposes a moratorium on penalties associated with the employer mandate retroactively from 2015 through the end of 2018.

“This common-sense bill will provide much-needed relief to small businesses and give them the certainty they need to create good jobs for hardworking Americans,” Walorski said.

The Save American Workers Act (H.R. 3798) would cost the government $58.5 billion over the next 10 years, according to a Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) estimate released this week.

The Cadillac tax – a 40 percent excise tax on high-cost employer-sponsored plans – was  created under the ACA as a means of funding benefits for the uninsured under the law. Originally scheduled to take effect in 2018, the tax has already been delayed twice. Most recently, a stop-gap funding measure enacted at the beginning of this year delayed the Cadillac tax from 2020 to 2022. Many associations and unions, the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE) included, have advocated for doing away with the tax entirely.

This article was provided to OSAE by the Power of A and ASAE's Inroads.