Small Business Health Insurance

Offering small business health insurance can help a business hire and retain highly skilled workers. A great way for a business to increase their value to potential employees is to offer more extensive benefits. Potential employees want to know that they, and their families, will be taken care of. Providing small group health insurance for your employees and their families helps keep employees healthy and allows them to work harder, while reducing stress. Offering your employees health insurance is a great way to better support your employees.

Premium costs can be shared between the employer and employee. Although it is not mandatory for an employe to cover the entire cost of an employees monthly insurance premium, in order to be more appealing to better qualified candidates in an extremely competitive market, some bay area companies are paying the entire monthly premium of all of their employees. Before you chose a health insurance plan for your small business, learn what you need to do to qualify for a small group health insurance plan.

• • An employer must have at least 1, but not more than 50, permanent, active, full-time employees, which excludes spouses and owners, for at least 50 percent of the preceding calendar quarter or preceding calendar year. Employees whose normal work week averages 30 hours, are considered full time.

• • An eligible employee is someone who receives a W-2 and is a not a spouse or an employer.

• • Employers may choose to offer coverage to employees working an average of 30 hours a week or at least 20 hours a week.

• They cannot be part of another group or have their own insurance.

• • An employer must offer health plan coverage to 100 percent of its eligible employees. (They don’t have to accept it)

• • All employers must have a workers’ compensation policy unless it is not required by law. Companies based out of state with employees hired in.

• • California must also have a California workers’ compensation policy.

• The business must not have been formed primarily for the purpose of buying a health plan or insurance coverage.

• • DE 9C/payroll for pay rolled employee, excluding spouses and owners.

• • California business license or fictitious business name filing.

• A current jointly filed IRS 1040 form with separate Schedule C forms for husband and wife.

If you have any further questions about starting a small group health insurance plan, feel free to contact us or give us a call at (510) 490-7700. We would love to use our expertise to fully customize a health insurance policy for you and your employees.