A set of rules released Monday will change how large companies calculate potential penalties under the Affordable Care Act. In addition, companies with between 50 and 99 employees got a break from penalties for another year. The rules also include a look-back method for companies to determine who is a full-time employee.

“In some ways, IRS seems determined to make it harder for staffing,” said George Readon, an attorney with the law firm Littler Mendelson, in a new post on The Staffing Stream. “It expressly refused to give the industry its requested presumption that newly-hired temporary employees are variable-hour employees subject to lookback periods. It would not set a special rule for “high turnover” jobs or clearly define termination of employment in the staffing context. It would not create a specially short break in service rule for staffing firms. And it also refused to relax the post-2014 rule that forbids employers to rely on the known or expected short duration of a person’s employment to put them into the variable-hour category.”

Reardon provides an in-depth look at the regulations today in The Staffing Stream. To read the post, click here.