The implementation of the requirement that certain businesses provide health care coverage under the Affordable Care Act - often called Obamacare - has been pushed back again.

The mandate had already been delayed from 2014 until 2015 to give businesses and federal officials more time to work through details of the complex regulations and how they would be enforced. Now Treasury Department officials have announced that the administration would not be enforcing the rules "across the board" next year as they had previously anticipated.

Employers with 50 to 99 employees will have to report on how many employees are covered by a company health care plan, but will not be penalized for failing to cover employees until 2016. Employers with 100 or more workers will be required to provide health care coverage for full-time workers, but will only have to cover 70% of workers in 2015 and 95% in 2016.

Companies with fewer than 50 employees are exempt from the mandate to provide health insurance coverage. In an effort to prevent businesses from "shedding" full-time employees to get under the 50 employee threshold, government officials said companies would be told to sign a "self-attestation" on their tax forms stating that they were not eliminating positions for this purpose.