Small business owners without group coverage

You own the business, and nobody hands you a benefits packet. The good news: at small scale you have more good options than a decade ago, not fewer.

Covering just yourself (and family)

For an owner with no employees — or none who want coverage — the individual Marketplace is usually the whole answer, with two owner-specific notes:

• Your "income" for subsidy purposes is your estimated net profit (plus household income), not revenue and not what you wish the K-1 said. Estimate honestly, update quarterly; the freelancer income guide applies to owners too.
• The self-employed health insurance deduction generally lets you deduct premiums above the line against business profit — which lowers MAGI, which can raise your subsidy. Have your tax preparer run the interaction rather than guessing.

Covering a small team: ICHRA is the modern default

A group plan for four people means underwriting, participation minimums, and renewal shocks. An ICHRA skips all of it: you set a fixed monthly allowance per employee class, employees buy their own Marketplace plans, reimbursement is tax-free. Predictable for you, portable choice for them. The honest catches — the employee subsidy interaction and same-terms-per-class rules — are covered in the ICHRA explainer.

SHOP (the ACA's small-group marketplace) still exists and can make sense if you want a traditional group plan and possibly the Small Business Health Care Tax Credit (under 25 FTEs, average wages under the threshold, employer paying at least half of premiums). In practice, most sub-10 teams find ICHRA simpler. [PLACEHOLDER — verify current SHOP availability and tax-credit thresholds for the states this page targets during licensed review.]

The spouse-on-payroll pitfall

A popular arrangement — employing your spouse and covering the family through them — has real tax benefits when done properly and real audit risk when done as a paper fiction. And a subsidy-specific trap: if your business offers your spouse-employee affordable coverage (or an affordable ICHRA), that offer can make the whole family ineligible for premium tax credits. Decide the payroll question and the coverage question together, with your accountant, not separately.

The decision tree, compressed

Solo → individual Marketplace plus the deduction. Small team you want to help → ICHRA at a budget you set. Want a classic group plan and might qualify for the credit → price SHOP. Whatever branch: the baseline is what individual plans cost in your county, and that's a ZIP code away.