Probably. The IRS FAQs say:
Employers Subject to the Employer Shared Responsibility Provisions
I understand that the employer shared responsibility provisions apply only to employers that are ALEs, meaning that they employ at least a certain number of employees. How many employees must an employer have to be an ALE and, therefore, be subject to the employer shared responsibility provisions?
Whether an employer is an ALE in a particular calendar year generally depends on the size of the employer’s workforce in the preceding calendar year. For example, an employer will use information about the size of its workforce during 2016 to determine if it is an ALE for 2017.
To be an ALE for a calendar year, an employer must have employed an average of at least 50 full-time employees (including full-time equivalent employees) during the preceding calendar year. To determine its workforce size for a calendar year, an employer adds its total number of full-time employees for each month of the prior calendar year to the total number of full-time equivalent employees for each month of the prior calendar year and divides by 12.
In general, for this purpose, an employer determines its number of full-time employees for a month by counting individuals employed on average for at least 30 hours of service per week during the month or at least 130 hours of service during the month. An employer determines its number of full-time equivalent employees for a month by combining the number of hours of service of all non-full-time employees for the month (but not including more than 120 hours of service per employee), and dividing the total by 120. For example, an employer that employs 40 full-time employees and 20 employees each with 60 hours of service in a month has the equivalent of 50 full-time employees in the month (40 full-time employees plus 10 full-time equivalent employees (20 X 60 = 1200, and 1200/120 =10)).
For section 4980H purposes, the number of an employer’s full-time equivalent employees is relevant only to determine if the employer is an ALE; full-time equivalent employees are not taken into account in determining the amount of employer shared responsibility payment, if any, that an ALE may owe.
June 2018
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