PBN Summit prepares businesses for coming year

WARWICK – The coming business mandates spelled out by the Affordable Care Act were among the topics explained to more than 100 of Rhode Island’s business leaders at the Providence Business News Summit on Government Regulations and Business held Thursday morning at the Crowne Plaza Providence-Warwick.
Top of mind for those employers in Rhode Island with 100 or more full-time equivalent employees is the requirement that the company must provide employees and dependents the opportunity to enroll in a health care plan that is affordable and provides essential minimum coverage. Robert P. Brooks, managing partner of Adler Pollock & Sheehan and chair of the firm’s labor and employment law group, went into great detail explaining the requirements, definitions and staggered implementation of this final large section of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, which passed Congress in 2010.
For instance, those employers with 100 or more employees need to offer the proscribed coverage to 70 percent of eligible workers in 2015 and 95 percent in 2016. Employers with 50-99 full-time equivalents have another year to offer health insurance, although in 2016, they also will be required to offer plans to 95 percent of their workforce. Brooks noted that there are 1,253 employers in Rhode Island with 50 or more workers and 565 of them have more than 100, and thus will required to offer health insurance in 2015.
Also weighing in on the topic of health insurance was financial consultant James J. Raiola, who as an insurance broker helps many companies select health insurance coverage for their employees. He said that since most large employers – those soon to be required to offer health insurance – in Rhode Island already offer health insurance to their employees, there was a small likelihood that any of them would be assessed the fine that comes with not complying with the law. However, he did point out that the state as a whole must determine what the funding stream is going to be if HealthSource RI, the state’s health insurance exchange, is going to remain operational after federal support ends next year.
Other topics covered extensively were the changes in the state’s corporate tax rates and reporting requirements – explored by Bruce A. Desrosiers, tax director for accounting firm BlumShapiro – as well as the changes to the state’s estate tax, something that advocates for change will help convince more well-to-do Rhode Islanders to remain in the state, which were explained by David T. Riedel, counsel at Adler Pollock & Sheehan.
A significant portion of the panel was devoted to the changes that the state has made at the Department of Labor and Training to put the unemployment insurance system online, a move that Jason Bliss-Wohlers, coordinator of the DLT’s UI programs, said would simplify what companies go through when reporting on former employees as well as save significant money in the process, which in turn is expected to lower the tax rate that companies use to calculate their payments into the state trust fund.
The panel discussion was moderated by PBN Editor Mark S. Murphy. Presenting sponsor for the event was Adler Pollock & Sheehan, while partner sponsors were BlumShapiro, James Raiola CFP & Associates, and the R.I. Department of Labor and Training. A more detailed recap of the summit will appear in PBN’s Nov. 17 issue.

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