COBRA Notices: What Employers Are Required to Send and When
The exact deadlines employers face for COBRA general and election notices, plus the documentation mistakes that trigger IRS penalties.
In this report 8 sections
Quick answer: Employers with 20 or more employees must send a COBRA election notice within 14 days after a qualifying event like termination or reduced hours ends group health coverage. Miss that deadline and the employer, not just the plan administrator, can face IRS excise tax penalties of up to $100 per day, per affected person.
Fact-checked as of September 2026 against current U.S. Department of Labor and IRS guidance.
COBRA compliance is one of those HR tasks that looks simple on paper and gets messy the moment a real termination happens on a Friday afternoon. This guide walks through exactly which notices employers must send, the deadlines attached to each one, and the mistakes that trigger the most penalties — written for the HR generalist or small-business owner who handles this without a dedicated benefits team.
What COBRA Actually Requires From Employers
The Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA) lets employees and their dependents keep group health coverage after a job loss, reduced hours, divorce, or a few other specific events, as long as they pay the full premium themselves plus up to a 2% administrative fee. The law doesn't hand employees free coverage. It hands them the right to stay on the same plan instead of scrambling for new insurance during a job transition.
COBRA applies to private-sector employers with 20 or more employees on more than 50% of typical business days in the prior calendar year, plus most state and local government plans. Smaller employers are exempt from federal COBRA, though many states run their own version with different thresholds, which we'll cover further down.
Two distinct notices carry the legal weight here, and mixing them up is the single most common compliance mistake we see at The Work Floor: the general notice and the election notice. They have different triggers, different deadlines, and different penalties for getting them wrong.
The General Notice: Day One of Coverage
The general notice, sometimes called the initial notice, has to go out within 90 days of an employee's group health plan coverage starting. It explains COBRA rights in plain terms, before anyone has actually lost coverage. Most employers fold this into new-hire benefits paperwork so it never gets forgotten on its own — the same packet covered in our guide to how to onboard a new hire in the first 30 days.
This is the part everyone gets wrong: plenty of employers assume the general notice and the election notice are the same document, sent once, at hire. They aren't. The general notice tells someone their rights exist. The election notice, triggered separately by an actual qualifying event, is what starts their clock to actually use those rights.
How Long Does an Employer Have to Send a COBRA Election Notice?
An employer or plan administrator has 14 days from the date of the qualifying event, or from when the plan administrator is notified of it, to send the COBRA election notice. That 14-day window is where most penalty cases start, since a late notice is what typically draws IRS and DOL scrutiny in the first place.
A qualifying event is any of a specific list: termination (voluntary or involuntary, except for gross misconduct), a reduction in hours that drops someone below the plan's eligibility threshold, divorce or legal separation from a covered employee, a covered employee's death, or a dependent aging out of eligibility. Each one starts the same 14-day clock. A reduction in hours is the qualifying event employers most often misclassify, similar to the confusion we cover in our guide to exempt versus nonexempt classification.
Once the election notice goes out, the qualified beneficiary gets 60 days to elect coverage, counting from whichever is later: the notice date or the date coverage actually ended. Coverage, once elected, applies retroactively to the day group coverage was lost — there's no gap, even if someone waits until day 59 to decide.
COBRA Notice Timeline at a Glance
The table below lays out every deadline in one place, since juggling three separate clocks is where most HR teams lose track.
| Notice or Action | Who Sends It | Deadline |
|---|---|---|
| General notice | Employer or plan administrator | Within 90 days of coverage starting |
| Employer notifies plan administrator of qualifying event | Employer | Within 30 days of the event |
| Election notice | Plan administrator | Within 14 days of notification |
| Beneficiary's election deadline | Qualified beneficiary | 60 days from notice or coverage loss, whichever is later |
| First premium payment | Qualified beneficiary | 45 days after electing coverage |
The Mistakes That Actually Trigger Penalties
The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) enforces COBRA notice requirements and has published guidance making clear that the burden of proving a notice was sent lies with the employer or plan administrator, not the former employee. A verbal conversation about benefits ending doesn't count as notice. Neither does an email with no delivery record.
Send every COBRA notice by a method you can document: certified mail with a return receipt, or a tracked electronic delivery system with proof of receipt if your plan document allows electronic notice. We've seen employers at The Work Floor lose a DOL inquiry entirely because they could describe sending a notice but couldn't produce proof.
- Confusing the general notice with the election notice, or skipping one entirely.
- Using the wrong start date for the 14-day or 60-day clock.
- Sending notice by email with no delivery confirmation, when the plan requires mail.
- Failing to notify dependents separately when they have their own address on file.
- Forgetting that a reduction in hours, not just a termination, triggers the clock.
These penalties carry real financial teeth: excise tax penalties under Internal Revenue Code Section 4980B can run $100 per day, per qualified beneficiary, for a compliance failure, capped at $200 per day when more than one family member is affected. On top of that, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) allows separate penalties of up to $110 per day for failing to provide plan-related notices when requested, enforced by the Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA), the DOL agency responsible for ERISA compliance.
What Happens When a Qualifying Event Overlaps Open Enrollment
A qualifying event doesn't pause open enrollment, and the two can collide in ways that confuse both the employer and the departing employee. If a termination happens during the employer's open enrollment window, the qualified beneficiary generally keeps the right to make the same plan-year elections active employees are making, not just whatever plan they happened to be on the day they lost coverage.
We've seen employers at The Work Floor mistakenly tell a departing employee their COBRA coverage is locked to the old plan year, which isn't accurate if open enrollment falls within their notice and election window. The safest approach is to route the qualified beneficiary the same open enrollment materials sent to active employees, with a note explaining how the deadlines interact with their COBRA election period.
Retroactive premium payment adds another wrinkle. Because COBRA coverage is retroactive to the date active coverage ended, a beneficiary who elects on day 59 and pays on day 45 after that can trigger claims for care received in the gap, sometimes weeks after the fact. Plan administrators need a process for reprocessing those claims once the first premium clears, rather than treating the gap period as uncovered by default.
When State "Mini-COBRA" Laws Apply Instead
Employers with fewer than 20 employees are exempt from federal COBRA, but that doesn't mean no continuation coverage obligation exists. More than 40 states have their own continuation coverage laws, often called mini-COBRA, covering smaller employers with their own notice deadlines and coverage lengths.
These state rules vary widely: some mirror federal COBRA almost exactly, others cap continuation coverage at a shorter period, and a few apply to employers as small as two employees. Always check your specific state's insurance department guidance before assuming a small employer is fully exempt from any notice obligation. Benefit notices like these tend to draw the same scrutiny as other compliance-driven HR policies, including the disclosure rules covered in our guide to pay transparency laws.
The Bottom Line
COBRA compliance comes down to two deadlines that matter most: the general notice within 90 days of coverage starting, and the election notice within 14 days of a qualifying event. Document every notice you send, use the right delivery method for your plan, and don't let a termination on a Friday turn into a missed deadline on day 15.
If your team manages benefits without dedicated compliance software, building a simple checklist tied to each qualifying event — termination, reduced hours, divorce, dependent aging out — is the single most effective way to avoid the penalties described above.
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