Effets of Obamacare on S corps and their shareholders

S Corporations, Health Insurance and Obamacare

The Affordable Care Act (also known as Obamacare) makes a number of changes to the way that small businesses account for and treat health insurance expenses.

Accordingly, I’m going to quickly review how the rules apply to Subchapter S corporations and then point out one of the largely ignored issues–the anti-discrimination requirement–that will affect many small S corporations.
To keep all of this information practical and actionable, though, I’m not going to talk about concepts or regulations. And no politics here either. This blog is supposed to be practical and provide how-to information.
So, I’m just going to describe how you handle the three common situations a small business is likely to encounter.

Example #1: The One-person S Corporation

Let’s start by describing the easiest case first: A one-person, one-employee S corporation.
This situation (thankfully) works in a manner that’s fairly straightforward and continues what’s gone on in the past.
Assume, for example, that you own and operate an S corporation that pays its single shareholder (you probably) $40,000 in regular wages and then also pays $10,000 in annual health insurance premiums.
In this case, the health insurance payments end up as a deduction for both income and payroll tax purposes, though the bookkeeping gets a little messy.
Here’s how things are supposed to work. The S corporation deducts $50,000 as wages on its tax return and shows the $50,000 as wages on the shareholder-employee’s W-2 in box 1.
However, in boxes 3 and 5 of the shareholder’s W-2 (which show the wages subject to Social Security and Medicare care taxes), the wages equal only $40,000.
In other words, the full $50,000 is subject to income taxes (potentially–but more on this in a minute). But only the $40,000 is subject to Social Security and Medicare taxes.
And now another wrinkle: That $10,000 of health insurance? You need to report that value in box 14 of the W-2 as self-employed health insurance.
When the shareholder-employee prepares her or his 1040 tax return, the full $50,000 of wages from box 1 of the W-2 gets reported on line 7 of the 1040. But then the $10,000 of health insurance gets treated as a self-employed health insurance deduction on line 29 as long as the employee qualifies for the deduction (more on this in a minute).
The net amount subject to income taxes, in other words, equals $40,000.
Anyway, that’s how the health insurance accounting works with a one-shareholder, one-employee S corporation.
And a couple of general rules about qualifying for the self-employed health insurance deduction:
First, in order to qualify for the self-employed health insurance deduction, the shareholder-employee needs to not be buying, and not be eligible to buy, subsidized health insurance.
Second, the S corporation must either pay the premiums, or if the shareholder-employee has already paid for the premiums, must reimburse the shareholder.

Example #2: Multiple Employees, All Covered

Let’s now look at what happens when a firm employs more than one person. For example, take the simplest case: a two-employee situation where one employee is the shareholder and the other isn’t.
As long as both the shareholder-employee and the non-shareholder-employee receive group plan health insurance from the S corporation (in other words, both the shareholder and non-shareholder get coverage in the same plan), you treat the shareholder-employee’s health insurance the same way as just described for a one-shareholder, one-employee business. (See IRC Code Section 106(a) and if you’re really interested Rev. Rul. 61-146 and Rev. Rul. 2002-3 and Rev. Rul. 2002-80.)
For example, if the shareholder-employee earns $40,000 and receives $10,000 in health insurance, you create the same sort of W-2 as you do for the situation described in example #1.
Things look a little differently for the non-shareholder-employee, but in effect work out the same basic way. Assuming the non-shareholder-employee also makes $40,000 and gets $10,000 of health insurance, what happens is the S corporation deducts the $40,000 as wages expense and then shows that $40,000 on a W-2.
The non-shareholder-employee’s W-2 shows $40,000 in boxes 1, 3 and 5.
The $10,000 of health insurance gets deducted by the S corporation and reported on the S corporation’s tax return as fringe benefits expense.
In both the case of the shareholder-employee and the case of the non-shareholder-employee, the employee pays neither income taxes nor payroll taxes (Social Security, Medicare, etc.) on the insurance.
Note: Small employers don’t need to report the health insurance paid for the employee on the employee’s W-2, but they can (and probably should) do so to highlight the value of the benefit. This health insurance gets reported in Box 12 using a DD code.

Example #3: Covered and Uncovered Employees

Now a more common situation: What happens if the S corporation employs both a shareholder and then also a non-shareholder-employee, or even several employees, but only pays health insurance for the shareholder-employee?
Okay, this is where the Affordable Care Act makes things messy.
While only businesses with 50 or more employees are required to provide employees with health insurance under the Affordable Care Act, the Act also prohibits discrimination with regard to health care benefits—and this prohibition applies to both small and large businesses.
As a practical matter, what this means is that a small business can’t provide piecemeal coverage, insuring some employees and not insuring others.
When the business adds a second employee, therefore, the firm has only two practical responses.
One response is for the employer to begin providing Affordable Care Act compliant insurance for everybody.
The other response is for the employer to stop providing insurance to anybody, including the shareholder-employees.
By the way, you might wonder why you can’t simply provide health insurance to the shareholder-employee. Good question. And here’s the answer: The Affordable Care Act levies a $100 per day, per person penalty for failing to comply with its anti-discrimination rules.
And the penalty for discriminating could be substantial. For a two-employee business which provides health insurance to the shareholder-employee but does not provide health insurance to the non-shareholder-employee, the S corporation could be tagged with a $36,500 penalty.
Note: The IRS says that it won’t begin to assess the discrimination penalties until it writes the regulations. So you probably don’t need to act immediately in 2014… But prudence suggests this risk is big enough, it’s something you want to get your hands on quickly.

Mitigating the Obamacare Discrimination Penalties

So here’s how S corporations need to view (or soon view) their health insurance spending in light of the Affordable Care Act’s penalties.
First, to review, while you aren’t required provide insurance for employees unless you have 50 or more employees, you still need to consider the discrimination penalties that can be levied in situations where you have more than just shareholder-employees as employees.
Note: This business about discrimination isn’t really a new concept. Pension plans have always worked this way—even for very small businesses.
Second, if your S corporation does employ two or more employees, you need to choose between providing no insurance to employees (including shareholder-employees) and providing a group plan to all employees. Only these two options let you avoid the heavy penalties discussed in the preceding paragraphs.
Third, note that you and your employees must obtain health insurance. We’re not discussing the option of “going bare”… the question is whether the employer or the individual pays for the policy.
Fourth, finally, note that if you do terminate employer-provided health, what you can do is adjust people’s compensation levels to mitigate the discontinued benefit. This tweak seems the one practical workaround you have if you cancel insurance. For example, if you cancel a health insurance benefit worth $300 a month, you can perhaps add $300 to the previously covered employee’s wages.
One final comment: You want to stay alert to future clarifications and fine-tuning of the law. What I’m describing here represents our best guess about how things work in early 2014. But thinking may change in the future as both Congress and the Internal Revenue Service gain experience implementing the law.

Thanks to Evergreen Small Business for this concise breakdown.

Churches depreciate assets just like everyone else!

Common Question, should our church record depreciation on its fixed asset purchases? We have been advised to do so in order to remain compliant with Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP). We see the benefit of having a record of our fixed assets and their values (original values or replacement cost), but don't see much value at all in recording depreciation.

Our annual budget is around $350,000. We have approximately 30 families and 150 people in regular attendance.

Answer:

In order to provide users of financial statements a GAAP presentation, building, equipment and other long-lived asset purchases must not be recorded as expenditures in the year of purchase. Rather, their costs are allocated to expenses over the years of their useful lives. Accountants call this allocation process depreciation. Some churches are required to present GAAP reports for purposes of bank financing or donor expectations. Generally, this is limited to ministries larger than the one cited in the above question.

I have found that most members of a congregation better understand reports presented on a cash or modified cash basis. For financial statements reported on a cash basis, church members should be able to clearly see that the beginning of year cash balance, plus total receipts, less total disbursements, equals end of year cash. This means that all receipts, even loan proceeds, show up as receipts on a Statement of Receipts and Disbursements (note, not an income / profit or loss statement). All disbursements, including purchase of long-lived assets and principal payments on debt, are reported on this Statement as well.

Statements that use a modified cash basis generally include assets and debts that are current in nature. For example, expenses are reported on the Statement of Receipts and Disbursements even though they are paid a few days after the reporting period is over (e.g. the December utility bill that gets paid in January, after the budget year is over, shows up in December disbursements).

One caveat. I believe that all ministries should employ the use of a balance sheet beyond simple reporting of a cash balance. The reason? Designated gifts. A cash-basis church that never receives designated gifts will present a balance sheet with cash, no liabilities, and an amount equal to the cash balance in its equity section (more appropriately called the Fund Balance section).

But most churches do receive designated gifts and do not spend 100 percent of these gifts before their budget years are over. These unspent amounts will be forgotten without one key modification to the balance sheet. Since I know a lot of churches use QuickBooks, I'll explain my common suggestion using its features.

When a designated gift is received, the Record Deposit window must include a Split entry. General offerings should be posted to an Income account type. But the designated portion of the total deposit should be posted to an Equity account type. QuickBooks will "remember" this contribution and not close it out to zero at the end of the year.

When a check is written (Write Checks window) to spend monies received from donors who put these stipulations on their gifts, then the check must be posted to the Equity account type that was established when the gift was deposited.

One additional benefit of this technique for designated gifts received and disbursed: the church's general fund budget receipts and disbursements are not inflated by this non-budget activity.