QSEHRA plan document: what you need to know

The qualified small employer health reimbursement arrangement (or QSEHRA) helps small businesses afford benefits for their teams. When it comes to the QSEHRA plan document, there are two main documents that need to be written, one for the employer (Legal Agreement) and one for the employees (Plan Summary). Take Command will walk you through both!

Offering benefits can go a long way in retaining top-notch employees. As our CEO, Jack Hooper, recently discussed with Bloomberg,

Benefits makes it feel like you care as an employer, and that’s what creates that sticky retention that they want.

Employer decisions: getting started with QSEHRA

Once you’ve decided to offer your employees a QSEHRA, there are a few decisions you need to make:

The QSEHRA plan document for employers (legal agreement)

The legal agreement establishes the small business HRA for the employer. The legal agreement should include:

Named fiduciaries and plan administrators and their responsibilities
Eligibility requirements for the small business HRA
Effective dates of participation
Description of benefits provided and excluded
How the small business HRA is funded and how it makes payments
Claims procedures
HIPAA privacy officers and rules relating to the use of protected health information (PHI)
Information on federal mandates
The procedure for amending the plan
The procedure for plan termination

The QSEHRA plan document for employees (plan summary)

Employees must be provided a written notice in the form of a Plan Summary. The Plan Summary is a condensed, user-friendly explanation (ie- not heavy on the legal-ease) of the QSEHRA benefit and how it works.

IRS Notice 2017-67 contains guidelines on the small business HRA initial written notice contents and provides an example of written notice. The QSEHRA Employee Notice must contain the following information:

Permitted benefit amount per employee & small business HRA start date for employee
A statement that the eligible employee must inform any Marketplace to which the employee applies for advance payment of the premium tax credit (APTC) of the amount of the provided benefit.
A statement that the amount of the provided benefit may affect the eligibility for and the amount of the premium tax credit and that the employee should retain the written notice because it may be necessary to calculate the premium tax credit on the employee’s individual income tax return.
A statement that if the eligible employee does not have minimum essential coverage for any month, then the employee may be liable for an individual shared responsibility payment under Section 5000A of the Affordable Care Act for that month and that reimbursements under the small business HRA for expenses incurred in that month will be included in the employee’s gross income.

Pro-tip: The Employee Notice can be delivered electronically according to the guidelines the IRS has set forth.

How Take Command can help with your QSEHRA plan document

Does this sound confusing, expensive or both? Don’t worry. That’s where Take Command’s small business platform can help. This post walks you step-by-step through QSEHRA administration, and just might convince you to let Take Command do the heavy-lifting and paperwork for you!

We’ll handle all the accounting and legal legwork, take care of onboarding each of your employees, and make tax time easy and painless. You’ll never have to hassle with receipts or worry about setting up a health plan again.