A 1095-C form is a health coverage statement your employer sends you and the IRS each year if the company had 50 or more full-time workers. It reports, month by month, what medical coverage your employer offered you, what it would have cost, and whether you enrolled. You don’t attach it to your tax return. You keep it with your records, and in most cases that’s the end of it.
Why You Received One
Form 1095-C comes from Applicable Large Employers, meaning companies that averaged at least 50 full-time employees during the prior calendar year. The count blends actual full-time workers with full-time equivalents calculated from part-time hours, so a business with a lot of part-time staff can still cross the threshold.1Internal Revenue Service. Determining if an Employer Is an Applicable Large Employer
If you worked full-time for such an employer during any month of the year, you get a form. “Full-time” here means averaging at least 30 hours of service per week, or 130 hours in a calendar month. The form covers the entire calendar year, including months when you weren’t employed there or weren’t full-time.
There’s one situation where part-time employees also receive a 1095-C: if the employer runs a self-insured health plan and the part-time worker enrolled in it. The form then documents actual enrollment rather than an offer of coverage.2Internal Revenue Service. Questions and Answers About Health Care Information Forms for Individuals
What the Form Reports
The form has three parts, and not all of them will be filled in for every employee.
Part I is identifying information: your name, address, and Social Security number, plus your employer’s name, address, and Employer Identification Number. Check it. A wrong SSN or misspelled name can cause IRS matching errors later.
Part II is the substance. It reports three things for each month of the year. Line 14 uses a code to describe what type of coverage the employer offered you and whether it extended to your spouse or dependents. Line 15 shows the lowest monthly premium you would have paid for self-only coverage that met minimum value standards. Line 16 uses another code that tells the IRS whether you enrolled, whether you were in a waiting period, or which affordability method the employer is relying on.3Internal Revenue Service. Form 1095-C, Employer-Provided Health Insurance Offer and Coverage
Part III is filled in only when your employer runs a self-insured health plan. If that’s the case, this section lists every person covered under your enrollment, including your spouse and dependents, along with their Social Security numbers and months of coverage. If your employer uses a traditional fully insured plan through an insurance company, Part III will be blank.
Reading the Codes on Lines 14 and 16
The two-digit codes look cryptic, but they’re the employer’s formal statement about what it offered you and why.
Line 14: What Was Offered
Each month gets a code describing the scope of the offer. A few common ones:
- Code 1A (Qualifying Offer): affordable, minimum-value coverage offered to you, your spouse, and your dependents.
- Code 1E: coverage offered to you, your spouse, and your dependents, but affordability isn’t established by this code alone.
- Codes 1B, 1C, 1D: coverage offered to some combination of you, your dependents, and your spouse, but not all three.
- Code 1H: no coverage was offered, or the employer wasn’t required to offer it for that month.
Codes 1B through 1E don’t say whether the coverage was affordable. Line 16 handles that.4Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Forms 1094-C and 1095-C
Line 16: Your Status and the Affordability Method
Line 16 explains where you stood and how the employer is documenting affordability:
- Code 2C: you enrolled in the employer’s coverage.
- Code 2D: you were in a limited non-assessment period, such as your first 90 days on the job.
- Code 2F: the employer used your Box 1 W-2 wages to prove the coverage was affordable.
- Code 2G: the employer showed your required contribution stayed below a set percentage of the federal poverty line.
- Code 2H: the employer calculated affordability based on your hourly wage or salary.
For the 2026 plan year, coverage counts as affordable if your share of the lowest-cost self-only plan is no more than 9.96% of the relevant income measure.5Internal Revenue Service. Rev. Proc. 2025-25
What to Do With the Form
Do not attach Form 1095-C to your tax return. The IRS is explicit on this. Keep it with your tax records in case questions come up later.2Internal Revenue Service. Questions and Answers About Health Care Information Forms for Individuals
You also don’t need to wait for it before filing. If your form hasn’t arrived by the time you’re ready to prepare your return, file with whatever health coverage information you already have.
The form matters more if you bought insurance through the marketplace during the year. In that case, the codes and premium figures in Part II help determine whether you qualified for a premium tax credit. If your employer offered you affordable coverage that met minimum value standards, you generally wouldn’t be eligible for marketplace subsidies, and the 1095-C is how the IRS checks.6Internal Revenue Service. Premium Tax Credit (PTC) Overview If you never used the marketplace, Part II doesn’t directly affect your tax situation.
How It Differs From Form 1095-B
People confuse these two forms constantly. Both report health coverage, but they come from different senders for different reasons.
Form 1095-C comes from a large employer and reports what coverage the company offered its full-time employees, whether or not the employee enrolled. Form 1095-B comes from insurance companies, government programs like Medicare or CHIP, and smaller employers with self-insured plans that aren’t large enough to be ALEs. Form 1095-B confirms that you actually had coverage.2Internal Revenue Service. Questions and Answers About Health Care Information Forms for Individuals
If you work full-time for an ALE that runs a self-insured plan, your 1095-C will have Part III filled out, which covers both purposes. You won’t receive a separate 1095-B in that case.
When to Expect It, and What If It Doesn’t Come
Employers used to be required to mail Form 1095-C to every full-time employee automatically. That changed starting with the 2024 tax year. An employer can now satisfy the requirement by posting a clear, conspicuous notice on its website explaining that employees may request a copy. The notice has to include an email address, mailing address, and phone number.4Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Forms 1094-C and 1095-C
If you request your form, the employer must provide it within 30 days of the request or by January 31 of the following year, whichever is later. For the 2025 tax year, the furnishing deadline has been extended to March 2, 2026, whether the employer mails the form automatically or is responding to a request.7Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Forms 1094-C and 1095-C
If you need the information and haven’t seen a form, check your company’s benefits portal for a notice, then contact HR or the benefits department directly to request a copy.