COVID-19 has certainly had far-reaching effects for employees, including the reduced ability of parents to use pre-tax money set aside in their Dependent Care FSA fund due to the unexpected shutdowns of daycares, nurseries, and schools. Because employees likely decided how much to contribute to their Dependent Care FSA before COVID-19 became widespread, the “use it or lose it” rule may seem particularly harsh for 2020. The good news is that employers can alleviate some of the concern about losing that money after December by simply amending their Section 125 Plan Document to include a grace period for the use of those funds. This gives employees a longer window of time (until March 15th, 2021 for calendar year plans), to use their Dependent Care funds for 2020. Please click here for more information, and if you have questions about amending your Dependent Care FSA Plan Document, please reach out to your Fall River Account Manager.

The Kaiser Family Foundation has released their 2020 Annual National Employer Benefits Survey. The survey has been tracking benefit statistics from private and public employers (other than the Federal Government) in the United States for the last 22 years. The 2020 survey included interviews with 1,765 employers.

Clients for whom Fall River is the health insurance broker were recently given free access to our new HR support tool, AleraHR. For those of you who have used ThinkHR before, AleraHR is our white-labeled version of that system.  AleraHR is a very robust HR and compliance system that offers many valuable and time-saving modules related to just about any HR topic you can think of! Best of all, you can submit questions by email or phone and get answers fast from certified HR professionals you can rely on.

The IRS recently announced the changes to the cost sharing and contribution limits for High Deductible Health Plans (HDHPs) and Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) in 2021. Also in this article, we’ve included some of the most common questions that group insurance brokers like us receive on HSAs. 

At Fall River we receive many questions regarding disability policies, and COVID-19 has introduced a plethora of new inquiries. Since disability provisions can be confusing and can vary between carriers, we’ve gathered a list of the most common questions our clients have posed to us. 

The Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, or COBRA, allows employees to continue their group health insurance at their own cost after they’ve been terminated from employment. COBRA is an employer law and there are significant penalties for non-compliance (up to $100/day for single coverage and $200/day for family coverage). Because of the substantial risk of those fines, Fall River highly recommends paying a TPA to administer COBRA. For those companies that choose to administer COBRA on their own, there are ten common mistakes made. 

Most HR professionals are aware that the ACA’s individual mandate no longer exists, meaning that most Americans will no longer need to verify on their 2019 tax return that they had health insurance. Not all are aware, however, that there are five states plus the District of Columbia where your employees ARE still subject to their state or District’s individual mandate, most of which are new in the last year. 

Despite numerous attempts over recent years to repeal The Affordable Care Act (ACA), the requirement for certain reporting is still the law of the land. The deadline of January 31^st, 2020 to distribute 1095-Bs or 1095-Cs to employees is fast approaching, and vendors get booked up early to complete the filings. Are you ready, and do you have your reporting vendor lined up yet?

Many employers are offering High Deductible Health Plans (HDHPs) to their workforce these days, and they sometimes express concern that members with chronic conditions may delay much-needed routine care because of the financial burden they experience while meeting their deductible.

Good news is on the horizon! On July 17, 2019, the IRS expanded the list of services considered preventive and therefore able to be covered by insurance before or at a reduced deductible.

The IRS recently announced the changes to the contribution limits for High Deductible Health Plans (HDHPs) and Health Savings Accounts (HSAs) in 2020. Also in this article, we’ve answered some of the most common questions we receive on HSAs. See if you know the answers before you read ours!