Here’s To Your Health (insurance)

July 14, 2010 | Subscribe to our RSS Feed

Does your dental practice employ less than 25 full time employees?  Are you a dentist who provides health insurance benefits for your employees?  If you answered yes, then you may qualify for a nice small-business healthcare tax credit.  The credit is available from 2010-2013.

I am going to be tossing out some crazy terms so just bear with me and read along.

Of course your dental practice otherwise known as an Eligible Small Employer (ESE) must meet certain criteria to be able to claim this credit:

1. The dental practice can employ no more than 25 Full-time Equivalent (FTE) employees who average no more than $50,000 in yearly wages.  If your dental practice employs 10 or fewer (FTE) employees with average yearly wages of $25,000 you may qualify for a higher credit.
2. You must have a qualified health insurance plan in effect.
3. You must pay at least 50% of the premium based on single coverage of each employee’s coverage.

Dentists who are sole proprietors or partners as well as 2% shareholders of an S corporation and dependents of these self-employed individuals are excluded from this calculation.

The credit for those dentists with 10 or fewer FTE’s who meet all of the criteria can be as much as 35% of the contributions the dental practice made to the qualified health plan to purchase qualifying health insurance coverage for it s employees.

That is a lot of “qualifiers” and the calculation of all these FTE’s and FTE wages can get pretty hairy so I don’t suggest you try this at home.  If you feel your dental practice makes the grade talk to your CPA and let him run the numbers for you.  There could be a nice credit available to offset some taxes at the end of the year.

Questions for Larry?

larry.goldberg@glassjacobson.com