The Affordable Care Act (ACA) requires providers of employer-sponsored health plans to provide Social Security numbers of individuals covered in the plan to the IRS for tax-reporting purposes.
PEBB self-insures two of its medical plans – PEBB Statewide and Providence Choice; PEBB is considered the health plan provider for these plans. When an employee enrolls in either of these plans, we have access to the employee’s SSN through the employer. When the member covers dependents (including spouse/partner) in either of these plans, we must ask the employee for the dependents’ Social Security numbers (SSN).
Our fully insured plans through AllCare, Kaiser, and Moda request this information from employees enrolled in their plans.
There is no penalty for the employee, PEBB or the plan if the employee does not provide the information.
The IRS uses the SSNs to crosscheck that members had employer-sponsored health care coverage during the plan year and didn’t get a health care tax subsidy.
The IRS has posted helpful information about this request: http://tinyurl.com/HealthSSNqa and http://tinyurl.com/HealthMayAsk.