The Obama administration is giving employers with 50 to 99 employees an additional year to comply with the Affordable Care Act or face fines.
The administration said those companies will have an additional year to comply, until Jan. 1, 2016.
For businesses with 100 or more employees, the so-called employer mandate will still take effect in 2015. But other newly announced provisions, dealing with technical issues such as the calculation of working hours, may help some of those firms.
The mandate was originally supposed to take effect this year.
More than 90 percent of companies with 50 or more employees already cover their workers without the government telling them to do so, but the debate has revolved around the potential impact on new and growing firms. Most small businesses have fewer than 50 workers and are exempt from the mandate. However, employer groups were also uneasy with a requirement that defines a full-time worker as someone averaging 30 hours a week, according to a report by The Associated Press.
“These final regulations secured the gold medal for greatest assistance to retailers, and other businesses, and our employees,” said Neil Trautwein, a vice president of the National Retail Federation.
