Overview
The Affordable Care Act (ACA) established the nonprofit Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute to promote the use of evidence based medicine by disseminating comparative clinical effectiveness research findings. This new Institute, which is funded in part by fees collected from insurers and plan sponsors, will ideally help patients and clinicians to make better informed health care decisions. The fees, which are treated as an excise tax, are often referred to as the “PCORI fees” or “PCOR fees”.
When to Remit the PCORI Fees?
For Plan years that ended between:
- October 1, 2012 – December 31, 2012 $1 fee is due by July 31, 2013
- January 1, 2013 – September 30, 2013 $1 fee is due by July 31, 2014
- October 1, 2013 – September 30, 2014 $2 fee is due by July 31, 2014
For all plans the second year fee increases to $2 per member and then it is adjusted each year thereafter based on increases in the projected per capita amount of national health expenditures. The fee is set to end in 2019.
Reporting and remittance of fees is completed through IRS Form 720. For information and to access Form 720 visit the IRS Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute Feewebpage at http://www.irs.gov/uac/Newsroom/Patient-Centered-Outcomes-Research-Institute-Fee.