Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act is 906 pages long. It can be easily found by typing it in at google.com. One of the highlights of the Act is to provide a credit to small business owners who provide health insurance to their employees starting in 2010.

The amount of the credit is equal to a maximum of 35 percent of the premiums paid by an eligible small business during 2010. This will increase to a maximum of 50 percent of premiums paid during the year 2014. The employer must have paid at least half the cost of single coverage for their employees to be eligible.

Since the credit was designed to help small business owners that employ low and moderate income workers, average wages per employee must be less than $50,000 per year. Generally, an employer must have fewer than 25 full-time equivalent employees. Employers with less than 10 full-time equivalent employees with average annual wages per employee of less than $25,000 will receive the maximum credit.

Unfortunately, employees such as dependents, including spouses and children, and most business owners are excluded from the definition of employee.

Hopefully this credit will be of help to many small business owners who are on the fence about providing health insurance for their employees due to cost concerns.