The new Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Small Business HealthCare Tax Credit helps small businesses and small tax-exempt organizations afford the cost of covering their employees’ health care benefits. This new program may enable you to expand your benefit plans to include specialty benefits and potentially offer a richer health care plan to your employees.  If you currently provide your employees health care benefits or if you currently cover your employees, you may qualify for the 2010 tax credit. Because you can get both the deduction and the tax credit, you may now be able to provide health care benefits to your employees at a reasonable premium.

You should seek advice from an accountant and attorney, but here are a few things to consider:

In an attempt to help our clients calculate how this tax credit may affect your business:

Count staff. To qualify for a credit, you must have no more than 25 full-time equivalent employees. To determine the total number of employees (not counting owners or family members) add together the number of full-time employees and the number of full-time equivalents for part-time employees (divide the annual total hours worked for part-time employees by 2,080).

Calculate Wages. Your average annual wages must be less than $50,000 and you will need to pay at least 50% of the premiums to qualify for the tax credit.  If you have uninsured employees If you do not cover your employees – the 2010 tax credit may make this the year to start. The tax credit allows you to both deduct your premium contribution as an expense and receive a credit that reduces taxes due. For example, if you qualify for the credit and you pay for $50,000 of employee health care premiums, the combined credit and deduction could reduce your tax bill by almost $23,000.1  Help your part-time employees find and enroll in new programs. You aren’t required to cover your part-time employees, but you can help them find and enroll in the new products and programs that are available this year. For example, some employees will be eligible to enroll in their parents’ health insurance plan. Some may be eligible to enroll in existing public programs. Some can find inexpensive individual coverage and even shop for small and large group plans. For additional information, you can visit the IRS Web site at

http://www.irs.gov/newsroom/article/0,,id=221511,00.html,

alternatively, contact your accountant, attorney; visit us at our web site at http://www.californiainsurancefinder.com/