By Patrick Connole - May 29, 2012

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A major, industry-shaking law like the Affordable Care Act often contains some pieces that don’t exactly capture the imagination of the public or business community. A recent report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) sheds light on one of the weaker-performing elements of this law: the small employer health insurance tax credit. GAO looked at the uptake of the credit by small employers and found not many were interested. It’s hard to gauge exactly how many are yawning out there, but it’s safe to say the numbers are rather large. For its part, GAO estimates a shade over 170,000 small employers claimed all or some of the credit in tax year 2010, but that compares to 1.4 million to 4 million eligible to do so. The “claim” versus “not claim” numbers are in “needle in the haystack” territory, and here is why. According to GAO, a good number of small employers find the credit too complex to deal with when contrasted with the benefit it offers. A major chunk of small employers don’t offer health insurance in the first place, and the credit has not enticed them to change, GAO says. Will more education and marketing by small business owner associations or the federal government attract more interest in the credit, or is this just one of those parts of a much larger program that fails to take off as expected? What parts of the reform law do you view as failures and which ones successes? You can read the GAO report at http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-12-549.