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Massachusetts Employee HIRD Form


rocknrolls2

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I have the following questions on the MA employee HIRD form mandate:

1) For purposes of determining who has to be furnished the employee HIRD form, the employer's medical plan provides that an employee becomes eligible to participate in the cafeteria plan on the first day of the month after s/he has been employed for 30 days. So, for example, if an employee is hired on May 15, s/he will become eligible for the medical plan on 7/1/2007. The HIRD regulation is not very clear on when the employee form has to be furnished to a new hire who has become eligible under the plan because it requires the form to be returned to the employer within 30 days "of the applicable open enrollment period." Does this reference to the open enrollment period mean the annual open enrollment period for the following year which would end in either October or November? Or, since each newly hired employee may enroll within 31 days of when s/he iks first eligible, does this refer to the 30 days after the end of the 31-day period in which the employee may enroll under the plan? In other words when does the employee HIRD form have to be returned to the employer in the example in the above scenario? Would it be August 31 (i.e., 30 days after the 31-day enrollment period in which the employee is first eligible)? January 31 of the following year? If the former, it would appear that we would have to issue the employee HIRD form to employees hired to work in MA on or after April 15, 2007, would have to be issued the form. Such employee would become eligible for the plan on June 1, 2007, have a 31-day period to elect to enroll ending July 2 and, if s/he declined coverage, would have to returned the completed form to the employer by August 1.

2) Under MA law, the cafeteria plan has to cover employees who normally work at least 64 hours per month. These employees would never have been offered coverage under the medical plan (which is confined to those expected to work at least 1,000 hours in a plan year). My question is, when do we need to furnish such employees the employee HIRD form?

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  • 2 weeks later...
Guest WelfareBoy

Let's start with the easy one first. The employees in question #2 should complete the employee HIRD form if they are either declining coverage through the employer's group health plan, or if they are declining the employer's offer to use its section 125 plan to pay for benefits on a pre-tax basis. It does not matter that those employees may not have access to the employer's group health plan.

Massachusetts wants to use these forms to make sure that individuals have health insurance so they can penalize them on their taxes if they do not.

Re: #1, newly hired employees are treated differently (I explain in my last paragraph, below). Employees who are required to sign an HIRD form must do so within 30 days after the close of their employer’s open enrollment period, or by September 30 of the reporting year, whichever comes first.

If an employer's open enrollment period for 2007 - 2008 ended prior to July 1, 2007, and employees have signed an employer form acknowledging that each has been offered, and declined, employer sponsored insurance, each such employee is not required to sign an employee HIRD form until the next applicable open enrollment period occurring on or after July 1, 2007.

For new hires, the employer must obtain the signed employee HIRD form from each new employee that either declines employer sponsored health insurance or declines to use the employer's Section 125 Cafeteria Plan to pay for health insurance within 30 days of the applicable open enrollment period.

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