The Obama Administration announced this week that it will delay for one year the mandatory employer and insurer reporting requirements under the Affordable Care Act.

The ACA requires information reporting by insurers, self-insuring employers, and other parties that provide health coverage. It also requires information reporting by certain employers with respect to the health coverage offered to their full-time employees. The administration has also delayed until 2015 the deadline for the law's central requirement that medium and large companies provide health coverage for their employees or face fines.

The decision to delay the reporting requirements follows concerns raised by the business community about the complexity of the requirements and the need for more time to implement them effectively. “We recognize that the vast majority of businesses that will need to do this reporting already provide health insurance to their workers, and we want to make sure it is easy for others to do so,” Mark Mazur, Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy at the Department of the Treasury, said in a statement. “We have listened to your feedback, and we are taking action." 

By delaying the reporting requirements, the Administration will be able to meet two goals: “First, it will allow us to consider ways to simplify the new reporting requirements consistent with the law,” said Mazur. “Second, it will provide time to adapt health coverage and reporting systems while employers are moving toward making health coverage affordable and accessible for their employees.” 

The Administration said it will publish within the next week formal guidance describing this transition. “Just like the Administration's effort to turn the initial 21-page application for health insurance into a three-page application, we are working hard to adapt and to be flexible about reporting requirements as we implement the law.”

The Administration said it expects to publish proposed rules implementing these provisions this summer, after a dialogue with stakeholders, in an effort to minimize the reporting. Once these rules have been issued, the Administration said it will work with employers, insurers, and other reporting entities to “strongly encourage them to voluntarily implement this information reporting in 2014, in preparation for the full application of the provisions in 2015.” 

Recognizing that the transition relief will make it impractical to determine which employers owe shared responsibility payments for 2014, the Administration has extended this transition relief to the employer shared responsibility payments. Any employer shared responsibility payments will not apply until 2015.