Medicare Compliance & Reimbursement

Plus: New Patients Over Paperwork newsletter looks at SNF payment system.

If you don’t pay the full Internal Revenue Service mileage rate to your employees for travel, you should alert them to a tax change that may affect them.

In a notice issued May 25, the IRS implements a change made in last December’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. “The [2018] business standard mileage rate … which was issued before the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act passed, cannot be used to claim an itemized deduction for un-reimbursed employee travel expenses in taxable years beginning after Dec. 31, 2017, and before Jan. 1, 2026,” the agency says on its mileage website.

“In the past, employees who were not reimbursed for business mileage-related expenses could deduct those expenses from taxable net income. The unreimbursed mileage deduction was allowed along with other ‘unreimbursed work-related expense’ where all unreimbursed work related expenses in excess of two percent of gross income would be deductible,” explains law firm Nexsen Pruet in analysis of the change. “However, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act in effect for the 2018 tax year eliminated many itemized deductions, including unreimbursed employee business expenses.”

Note: If you pay staff less than the standard rate, “the recipient can no longer deduct the difference between the rate paid and the standard rate on their individual income tax return as an itemized deduction,” points out consulting firm The Health Group in Morgantown, West Virginia.

In other news…

The CMS revolution to cut Medicare providers’ paperwork to a minimum continues with the most recent release of the Patients Over Paperwork newsletter. This time the topic concerns Skilled Nursing Facilities (SNF) and Nursing Homes administrative burdens.

“CMS has been working tirelessly to evaluate and streamline regulations and operations with the goal to reduce unnecessary burden, increase efficiencies, and improve the customer experience,” stressed the release.

Over the last 12 months, the agency has asked questions, requested feedback, met with stakeholders, and reviewed work in progress. The discourse centered around nine themes that arose from the public commentary. “From there we grouped them and identified 15 actions CMS could take to address burden,” the agency guidance stated.

Site visits and customer feedback also impacted the research.

See more about the SNF feedback and what CMS has in mind to curtail clincians’ burdens at www.cms.gov/Outreach-and-Education/Outreach/Partnerships/Downloads/July2018Newsletter.pdf.