What Is Form 1095-B and How Does It Affect Taxes?

Form 1095-B is a health coverage statement that shows who was insured, which months they were covered, and who provided the plan. It comes from insurers, government programs like Medicaid and Medicare, and small self-insured employers. You do not attach it to your federal tax return, and the IRS says you should not wait for it before filing. Where it actually matters is on your state return, if you live somewhere that still penalizes residents for going uninsured.

What the Form Shows

Form 1095-B has four parts, and each answers a different question about your coverage.

Part I identifies you as the responsible individual: name, address, Social Security number, and date of birth.
Part II identifies your employer, if your coverage came through one. For Medicaid, Medicare, or an individual policy, this part is blank.
Part III identifies the coverage provider itself, whether an insurance company, a government agency, or a small self-insured employer, with an EIN and contact phone number.
Part IV lists every person covered under the policy along with checkboxes for the months each was covered. If someone was covered all year, a single “all 12 months” box is checked.

Look at Part IV before you do anything else with the form. A wrong Social Security number or a missed coverage month can create problems on a state return or draw unnecessary correspondence from a tax authority. Corrections have to come from the provider in Part III; the IRS cannot fix the form for you.¹

How It Differs From 1095-A and 1095-C

Three different 1095 forms exist, and people mix them up constantly.

Form 1095-A comes from the Health Insurance Marketplace. It is the only 1095 you need for the Premium Tax Credit.
Form 1095-B comes from an insurance company, a government program, or a small self-insured employer — coverage that did not run through the Marketplace and did not come from a large employer.
Form 1095-C comes from large employers (generally 50 or more full-time employees) and goes to their full-time workers, plus any part-timers enrolled in a self-insured plan.

The provider that sends you a 1095-B files an identical copy with the IRS.²

You May Not Get One in the Mail Anymore

Starting in 2024, insurers and other coverage providers are no longer required to mail Form 1095-B automatically. They can instead post a notice on their website telling you the form is available on request. This change trips up people who received the form in the mail every year and suddenly stopped seeing it.³

If your provider uses the website method, its notice must include an email address, mailing address, and phone number for requests, and it must furnish the form within 30 days of your asking. For providers who still send the form directly, the deadline for the 2025 tax year is March 2, 2026. That already reflects an automatic extension from the statutory January 31 deadline, and no further extensions are available.³

Practical rule: if it is mid-March and nothing has arrived, check your insurer’s website or member portal for a request link before assuming something went wrong.

Do You Need It to File Your Federal Return?

No. The federal penalty for going uninsured has been $0 since 2019, so lacking coverage carries no federal tax consequence.⁴ The form is not attached to your federal return, and the IRS says you should not wait for it before filing. If you know you had coverage, you can file using your own records: insurance cards, premium payment confirmations, or explanation-of-benefits statements all work as backup.²

One boundary worth naming: Form 1095-B is not what you use to claim the Premium Tax Credit. That calculation runs off Form 1095-A from the Marketplace, filed with Form 8962. Form 1095-B does matter indirectly, because coverage it reports counts as minimum essential coverage; if you were eligible for that kind of coverage through an employer or a government program in a given month, you generally cannot claim the Premium Tax Credit for that same month.⁵

Because the IRS gets its own copy of every 1095-B from the provider, keep yours with your tax records. If a question ever comes up about your coverage, the form ends the conversation quickly.

Where the Form Actually Matters: State Individual Mandates

Several states and the District of Columbia run their own individual mandates with real financial penalties, and this is where Form 1095-B earns its keep. You use the coverage data from Part IV to complete your state return and avoid an incorrect penalty assessment. The jurisdictions currently imposing penalties are California, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island, and the District of Columbia. Vermont requires residents to report coverage status but does not impose a financial penalty.

Penalty structures vary but share a common shape: you owe the greater of a flat dollar amount per uninsured person or a percentage of household income, capped at a state-specified maximum. A rough sense of the numbers:

California: $950 per uninsured adult and $475 per uninsured child, or 2.5% of household income above the filing threshold, whichever is higher.
Massachusetts: penalties scale with income and can reach $2,532 per year for individuals above 400% of the federal poverty level. No penalty applies at or below 150% of poverty, and a coverage gap of 63 days or less is exempt.
New Jersey: a minimum flat penalty of $695 per uninsured adult, with a family maximum of $2,085 under the flat method, or 2.5% of household income, whichever is greater.
Rhode Island: 2.5% of income above the filing threshold or a flat amount of roughly $695 per adult and $348 per child, whichever is higher.
District of Columbia: $745 per uninsured adult and $372.50 per child, or 2.5% of income above the filing threshold, whichever is larger.

Every one of these penalties is calculated month by month. Eight months of coverage and four months uninsured means you owe only for the four uncovered months, and the checkboxes in Part IV of Form 1095-B are exactly what the state uses to draw that line. Filing without this information can lead to a wrong penalty amount or processing delays.

Fixing Errors and Getting a Missing Copy

If something on the form is wrong — a Social Security number, a name spelling, coverage months that do not match your records — contact the provider listed in Part III. Only the provider can issue a corrected form, because the IRS processes only what the provider submits.⁶ Providers are also required to send corrections for retroactive coverage changes, such as a mid-year cancellation, updating both your copy and the IRS copy.³

If you never received a form you expected, check first whether your provider switched to the website-posting method. Many insurers stopped mailing in 2024. Look for a notice on the insurer’s website or member portal and submit a request by email, phone, or mail. If a state mandate deadline is bearing down and the form still is not in hand, file with the documentation you have — insurance ID cards, premium receipts, explanation-of-benefits statements — and keep those records in case the state asks for proof.²

How Long to Keep It

The IRS recommends keeping information returns and supporting records for at least three years from the due date of the return they relate to. A 2025 Form 1095-B used on a return filed in April 2026 should stay in your files until at least April 2029. If you live in a mandate state, check whether it can assess penalties further back than the IRS’s standard audit window and hold onto the form for that longer period.³

1
Internal Revenue Service. 2025 Form 1095-B
2
Internal Revenue Service. Questions and Answers About Health Care Information Forms for Individuals
3
Internal Revenue Service. Instructions for Forms 1094-B and 1095-B (2025)
4
HealthCare.gov. Exemptions From the Fee for Not Having Coverage
5
Internal Revenue Service. Eligibility for the Premium Tax Credit
6
Internal Revenue Service. About Form 1095-B, Health Coverage