Strategic Consultation

When ACA reporting began in 2015, Passport Software introduced a comprehensive software solution that allowed businesses to meet the new 1095-C reporting requirements. Our IRS-certified ACA software simplifies employee information tracking and full-time/part-time analysis. It provides tools to help you simplify filing and manage compliance throughout the year.

Both our ACA software and Full Service Management option assist ALEs in adhering to the Affordable Care Act, yet they provide varying degrees of assistance. Our Full Service option helps ALEs offer health coverage that meets the requirements for minimum essential coverage, affordability, and minimum value. It provides timely and accurate filing of Forms 1094-C and 1095-C to avoid penalties for late or inaccurate reporting.

With the Full Service option, our experts can identify potential non-compliance issues before they result in errors.

Full Service

We noticed that some of our ACA software clients would forget how they coded everything 12 months before, or the office employee who used to handle it was no longer with the company.  Many new clients were coming to us but didn’t want to use any software at all.  For these people, we introduced Passport ACA Full Service.

Clients provide the following:

• Company and contact information for IRS filing requirements
• Discuss the nature of your workforce, insurance coverage, and offer policies with a Passport ACA Professional to ensure you are using the correct codes and contributions
• Complete our Excel spreadsheet with basic employee information, including name, address, SSN, and hire/termination dates.

We do the rest:

• Enter company information, configure company defaults, and import all employee data
• Generate 1095-C codes and contributions with our smart tools (no overwhelming 100-column spreadsheets for you!)
• Use IRS prescreening to catch SSN/Name errors before 1095-Cs are filed
• Provide 1095-C draft copies for client review and approval
• Electronically file the 1094-C 1095-Cs on your behalf
• Notify the client of acceptance with their confirmed IRS Receipt ID

Passport offers an à la carte option to our Full Service clients. For businesses with too many variable hour employees to reliably monitor internally, we can import hours worked for employees and apply ACA specified rules to create FT/PT recommendations. Nobody slips through the cracks.

However, we quickly learned that even with excellent tools, people still needed someone to help understand the complex concepts and legal nuances, so we introduced the first of our services.

ACA Software and Services Support

As a new branch of our standard hourly software support, we offered clients the chance to tap into our expertise on the ACA legislation itself. We were able to guide people through:

• Safe Harbors and determining affordability
• When to offer coverage
• What to do when an employee’s hours grew or shrank
• What to do when someone was rehired
• Understanding the key information reported in Part 2 of the 1095-C
  • Line 14—which offer codes applied to unique circumstances
  • Line 15—understanding how the monthly reporting amounts differed from real-life employee contributions
  • Line 16—codes to show terms of enrollment, waived coverage, or absence of offers, and why
  • Line 17 didn’t exist back then, but now we help people determine whether to use this field at all, or which Zip Code applied

As a follow-up to our knowledge-based consultations, we also recognized the demand for “last mile” electronic filing on their behalf.

1094-C/1095-C Electronic Transmission Services

In some cases, it was helpful to the employer simply to have the extra month before the deadline, but most of the time it was frustration with the bureaucracy of the Transmitter Control Code application process.  Our IRS-approved Proxy Filing Service eliminates the need for multiple representatives of a company complete:

• Registration with me
• Registration with IRS E-Services
• Apply for an ACA Transmitter Control Code (TCC)
• Apply for IRS TIN Matching to prescreen for SSN mismatches
• Log in to upload the electronic 1094-C/1095-C and record the Receipt ID
• Log in to verify that the transmission has been accepted

Penalty Consultation

Did you know a company can do everything right and still receive a Letter 226J ESRP Penalty Notice? If an employee purchases healthcare coverage on the exchange and claims the Premium Tax Credit on their tax return, that generates an immediate presumption of employer guilt. The company will receive the penalty notice (typically 18 months after filing) and the responsibility falls upon them to dispute the claim.

Of course, reporting errors, mis-identification of full-time employees, and late or missing filings also result in penalties.

Providing the IRS with a signed waiver of coverage is the golden ticket, but there are other methods to demonstrate compliance or at least good-faith effort. The overwhelming majority of Passport Penalty Consultation Clients have had their penalties completely rescinded, and after 10 years, we have never had a single client whose penalty wasn’t at least significantly reduced.

Since the inception of the ACA, Passport Software has been an industry leader in Affordable Care Act compliance software and services. To learn more about how our ACA software and services can ease the burden of compliance, call 800-969-7900. Or, contact us – we are here to help.