Generally, under Employer Shared Responsibility (ESR), applicable large employers (generally, employers with 50 or more full-time employees, including full-time equivalents) face a potential
penalty if they don’t offer minimum essential coverage to full-time employees and their child dependents that has both minimum value (company is paying at least 60 percent of covered health care expenses for a typical population) and is affordable (full-time employees cannot pay more than 9.5 percent of their income for the lowest-cost, self-only coverage). Employers with fewer than 50 full-time employees are not subject to ACA’s ESR provisions. For 2015, employers with between 50 and 99 full-time employees are exempt from the ESR penalty if the employer provides an appropriate certification and meets certain conditions.
In 2015, employers subject to the mandate must offer coverage to 70 percent of their full-time employees and child dependents or risk penalties for failure to offer coverage to all full-time employees and child dependents. To avoid a penalty in 2016, employers subject to ACA’s ESR provisions must offer coverage to 95 percent of their full-time employees and child dependents.
