We’ve had a lot of discussion here on Staffing Talk about the healthcare act and its potentially dire consequences for temporary staffing agencies, customers and employees, but a lot of that has been pure speculation because of ambiguities about whether temporary employees would in fact be considered “full-time” and thus subject to shared responsibility for healthcare by their employers.
The government is also wondering. Good of them isn’t it?
Well now we can say without equivocation that we aren’t the only ones wondering. The government is also wondering.
Good of them isn’t it? More than 2.5 million jobs are at stake, and so empathetic our administration is with the needs of the 99% that they too have begun to wonder.
In fact they’ve issued 18-pages of guidelines (hat tip David Thomas, WebMaster at All-In-One) that included this gem re temporary staffing:
As part of the efforts to develop workable and flexible rules on the application of §
4980H, with extensive input from stakeholders, Treasury and the IRS have issued
several notices describing potential approaches to interpreting § 4980H and requesting
public comments. In response, numerous helpful comments have been received and
reviewed. Those comments continue to be considered and taken into account in the
process of formulating regulations and other administrative guidance that stakeholders
will be able to rely on. Among the specific issues currently under consideration with
respect to the identification of full-time employees under § 4980H are the following: 18
(1) Whether and, if so, what types of safe harbor methods should be available to
employers for use in determining the full-time status of short-term assignment
employees, temporary staffing employees, employees hired into high-turnover positions,
and other categories of employees that may present special issues?
