Momentum - Business to Business Online Magazine MOMENTUM August 2017 | Page 36

Small Businesses Should Look at Health Insurance With all the discussion about health insurance, many people are looking to their employers for help with coverage.  One of the programs available to employers who have between 2 and 50 employees is the SHOP plan.  SHOP stands for Small Business Health Options Plan. There are 5 reasons that you, as a small business owner, may want to consider this option: 1 2 3 SHOP plans have many options for you to offer to your employees.  You can select from PPO and HMO plans.  You can allow your employees to select a plan of their choosing, or you can limit the number of plans that they can choose.  The SHOP program offers your small business a tax credit for offering these plans to your employees.  It's similar to the tax credit on the individual plans, but this is for the business rather than the individual. The employer selects how much coverage that they will offer to their employees and how that will be calculated.  The employer must pay 50% of the aggregate premium, but they can select to pay more than 50%.  The employee pays the rest.  The employer can decide if they will offer coverage for dependents, and how much, if any, they will contribute towards that premium.  By: Shari Ferguson J Macpherson Insurance & Financial Services, LLC [email protected] 4 5 SHOP plans include both medical and prescription coverage.  Dental can also be added if desired. The administration of the plan is done by the SHOP Marketplace.  If you have an employee leave, they can be placed on COBRA.  If you have a new employee join, the SHOP marketplace will help you get that employee covered. To qualify for SHOP, a business must have at least 2 full- time employees who are not related and at least 1 is not the owner, and no more than 50 full-time equivalent employees.  At least 70% of the FTE employees must agree to participate in SHOP or be covered by Medicare, VA or spouse's coverage, etc. To qualify for the tax credit, the employer must have no more than 25 employees.  The average employee salary is about $50,000 or less.  Employer must pay at least 50% of the employee's cost of the premium.