Catsby

Can you exclude Joe's ownership under the employee rule (i.e., the rule excluding stock owned by employees, if the stock is subject to conditions that restrict his/her right to dispose of the stock)?

Several of our clients have been approached by vendors to offer telemedicine products outside of their group health plans (e.g., to part-time employee groups who are not eligible for medical coverage). It has always been my understanding that telemedicine benefits would constitute a group health plan and be subject to Affordable Care Act requirements (preventive services, etc.) that would be functionally impossible for a telemedicine benefit to meet (e.g., the requirement to offer immunizations). I have seen some vendors make the argument that the telemedicine benefits could fall under the excepted benefits rules, as EAPs. However, in order for an EAP to be an excepted benefit, it cannot offer significant benefits in the nature of medical care. I find it hard to believe a telemedicine benefit could meet that requirement. Are you guys also seeing these products becoming very common? Is there some rule I am missing that is allowing employers to offer standalone telemedicine benefits to their employees? TIA for any thoughts!

Has anyone dealt with filing corrections for entities that filed Form 1095-Cs under the wrong entity? For example, entities A and B are part of the same controlled group. B pays this group of employees (and provides their Form W-2s), but their Form 1095-Cs were filed under entity A. This means that entity B has filed Form W-2s but no corresponding 1094-Cs or 1095-Cs, which is likely to trigger a letter from the IRS. Is there a way to correct this before the IRS sends the penalty letter? I read the Publication 5165 correction rules to say no - you need an original record to correct. In this case, there's no original record to correct. Anyone have experience with this? TIA!

I have mainly seen employers letting one of the bigger refinance companies come to the office and market, usually with a "bonus" for employees who sign up. I suspect SoFi is pretty aggressively marketing this approach since I have seen them a lot. This is a pretty easy and low-risk option for the employer (although SoFi's bad PR lately may affect this trend! - https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/12/technology/sofi-chief-executive-toxic-workplace.html?_r=0).

Hi all, Does anyone have recent (i.e., post-2013 M-1 regulations) experience with late filing penalties for the M-1? Assuming there's no fraud involved, and an employer unintentionally created a MEWA, does the DOL actually assess the $1,500/day penalty? There does not appear to be a DFVCP-like program to self-report and mitigate the penalties, and we are struggling to figure out how the DOL handles this in practice. We've tried the DOL number in the M-1 preamble multiple times, with no luck. Does anyone have any experience with this, or a contact within the DOL we could reach? Thanks much!

We reached out to Jeremy C. Livingood at Jeremy.c.livingood@irs.gov. Hope this helps!

I would be really curious to know if there were active Section 125 plan audits. I've only seen a little bit of chatter on them (generally on old threads), so I assume they aren't very likely to happen.

Update - the IRS confirmed that the letter was sent in error. Crisis averted! Thanks to all for the help/input!

Agreed! I don't think the client is comfortable doing so, but I'll update if that changes or if I come across the letter from another source.

Yes, they were.

I work with a company that just received a "Dear Taxpayer" letter, purportedly from the IRS, asking them to re-submit all Form 1095-Cs because they were incomplete, or not in the required format. Has anyone else seen a letter like this? I haven't seen any chatter online and am curious about its legitimacy. This appears to be a form "1865C" (which I can't find any reference to online), and directs us to send the 1095-Cs to a particular IRS stop in Kansas City (which I've also never seen referenced online). Any thoughts? Has anyone received something similar or seen anything about this? Thanks much!