Employers received a break from the Obama administration July 2 when it announced that the Affordable Care Act’s employer mandate provisions are being delayed until 2015.

Companies will have an extra year to ensure they provide acceptable health insurance to full-time workers without risking the $3,000-per-person penalty written into the health care law.

Under the provisions of the law, companies with 50 or more full-time or equivalent workers were required to offer an affordable, comprehensive health insurance policy to them starting Jan. 1. The rule has been heavily criticized by many business groups.

In a statement released July 2 on the U.S. Treasury Department’s website, Mark J. Mazur, the department’s assistant secretary for tax policy, said it understood business group’s concern over the complexity of the law’s reporting requirements and would take an additional year to hopefully simplify them.

Other provisions of the law were also delayed. Read more about those here.