The Affordable Care Act has added new paperwork requirements for companies, which is turning out to be bad for some small businesses and good for others. The cost of following regulations depends on the type of business, but Fox Business has reported that companies are spending, on average, $15,000 per year to comply with the law. Some of that expense is paperwork.
It’s an inconvenience and additional expense that companies didn’t previously have, but some companies, such as human resources providers and software developers, are growing and hiring as a result.
The law requires that companies track workers’ hours to determine whether the business falls into the category that’s required to offer health insurance to employees working over 30 hours a week. Companies are also required to track the months an employees is covered by insurance and the cost of the premiums.
Extra expense comes when companies don’t have an integrated system for tracking. Some companies have separate software for payroll, attendance, and benefits management, and they don’t share data between them. So a staff member must manually combine the data to complete the required paperwork, at least until they update their system.