Expat Employee Count and Employer Sizing Rules

Wondering about expat employee count and employer sizing rules?  According to final regulations released in 2013, employees whose “work” is outside of the U.S., do not count toward your 50 employees in the U.S.  You must be careful if your U.S. based employee group is close to 50, as an expat could come to the U.S. for more than 6 months in a given year and possibly count toward that 50.  If 10 of those 100 expat employees were back in the U.S. for more than 6 months, they could potentially count toward your 50, and if you had 45 normal U.S. based employees, the addition of the 10 would put you over the 50 limit.  If an employer had 100 expat employees and only 15 U.S. based employees, they are not an ALE and therefore would not be subject to the Group Mandate under ACA.