IRS may have big ACA employer tax woes, advocate says

An official who serves as a voice for taxpayers at the Internal Revenue Service says the IRS may be poorly prepared to handle the wave of employer health coverage offer reports now flooding in.

Related: IRS faces ACA service squeeze

The Affordable Care Act requires “applicable large employers” to use Form 1095-C to tell their workers, former workers and the IRS what, if any, major medical coverage the workers and former workers received. Most employers started filing the forms in early 2016, for the 2015 coverage year.

This year, the IRS is supposed to start imposing penalties on some employers that failed to offer what the government classifies as solid coverage to enough workers.

Nina Olson, the national taxpayer advocate, says the IRS was not equipped to test the accuracy of ACA health coverage information reporting data before the 2016 filing season, for the 2015 coverage year. The IRS expected  to receive just 77 million 1095-C forms for 2015, but it has actually received 104 million 1095-C’s, and it has rejected 5.4 percent of the forms, Olson reports.

“Reasons for rejected returns include faulty transmission validation, missing (or multiple) attachments, error reading the file, or duplicate files,” Olson says.

Meanwhile, on the fly, the IRS has had to develop a training program for its employees who are working on these ACA issues, when the agency had been hoping to begin training this month, Olson says.

“The training materials are currently under development,” Olson says. She says her office did not have a chance to see how complete the training materials are, or how well they protect taxpayer rights.

Olson discusses such concerns about IRS efforts to administer ACA tax provisions, and many other tax administration concerns, in a new report on IRS performance. The Taxpayer Advocate Service prepares the reports every year, to tell Congress how the IRS is doing at meeting taxpayers’ needs.

In the same report, Olson talks about other ACA-related problems, such as headaches for ACA exchange plan premium tax credit subsidy users who are also Social Security Disability Insurance program users, and she gives general ACA tax provision administration data.

The Taxpayer Advocate Service annually prepares a report for Congress about how the IRS is doing at meeting taxpayers’ needs. (Photo: iStock)

IRS: ACA program administrator

The ACA premium tax credit subsidy program helps low-income and moderate-income exchange plan users pay for their coverage.

Exchange plan buyers who qualify can get the tax credit the ordinary way, by applying for it when they file their income tax returns for the previous year. But about 94 percent of tax credit users receive the subsidy in the form of an “advanced premium tax credit.”

When an exchange plan user gets an APTC subsidy, the IRS sends the subsidy money to the health coverage issuer while the coverage year is still under way, to help cut how much cash the user actually has to pay for coverage.

When an APTC user files a tax return for a coverage year, in the spring after the end of the coverage year, the user is supposed to figure out whether the IRS provided too little or too much APTC help. The IRS is supposed to send cash to consumers who got too little help. If an APTC user got too much help, the IRS can take some or all of the extra help out of the user’s tax refund.

Another ACA provision, the “individual shared responsibility” provision, or individual coverage mandate provision, requires many people to own what the government classifies as solid major medical coverage or else pay a penalty.

Individual taxpayers first began filing ACA-related tax forms in early 2015, for the 2014 coverage year. Early last year, individual taxpayers filed ACA-related forms for the second time, for the 2015 coverage year.