Under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), most people must have health insurance or pay a tax penalty. The ACA requires employers to give employees and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) information about income and health insurance coverage. To implement this, the IRS has created new tax forms that will help a person prove he or she maintained health insurance coverage as required by the ACA to avoid the tax penalty. The new forms are called the 1095-A, 1095-B, and 1095-C. How the person obtains his or her health insurance dictates the form he or she will receive.
Form 1095-A is for those who obtained health insurance through the federal or a state health insurance exchange (e.g., Access Health CT). Form 1095-B is for those who purchased individual insurance directly from an insurer. Form 1095-C is for those who received employer-provided health insurance coverage.
Originally, insurers and employers had until February 1, 2016 to send 1095 forms to people for the 2015 tax year. But the federal government has extended that deadline by two months. The 1095-B and 1095-C forms for the 2015 tax year are now due to people by March 31, 2016.
Some individual taxpayers may be impacted by this extension. IRC Notice 2016-4 provides guidance to individuals filing their tax returns prior to receiving their 1095 forms. “For 2015 only, individuals who rely upon other information received from their coverage providers about their coverage for purposes of filing their returns need not amend their returns once they receive the Form 1095-B or Form 1095-C or any corrections.”
