On August 31, 2012, the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) issued Revenue Procedure 2012-35, which discontinues the IRS letter forwarding program for qualified retirement plans. Before September 1, 2012, the IRS letter forwarding program was available to assist plan administrators, plan sponsors, and qualified termination administrators of abandoned plans under the DOL’s abandoned plan program to […]
On January 23, 2012, the IRS issued Notice 2012-9, which provides additional guidance on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“PPACA”) requirement that employers report the aggregate cost of employer-sponsored health coverage on Form W-2 beginning with the 2012 Form W-2. The guidance clarifies that an employer that contributes to a multiemployer plan or […]
Books-A-Million, an employer that a court determined failed to provide COBRA notice to an employee, was ordered to pay approximately $40,000 in statutory penalties, approximately $42,000 in attorney’s fees and approximately $3,000 in costs.
Employers can provide benefits, tax-free, under tax code Section 139 and Revenue Ruling 2003-12 to employees who are victims of Superstorm Sandy. And, there is essentially no administration involved for the employer to be able to take advantage of this type of plan.
On an issue of first impression, Ken Wagner, a partner with Blitman & King secured a victory on appeal for a number of multiemployer benefit funds that sought to shift the burden on record keeping. The case was discussed and highlighted in Bloomberg BNA’s Daily Labor Report (178 DLR AA-1, September 13, 2012, © 2012 […]
In one of the first 401(k) fee class action cases to be decided on the merits, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Missouri recently ruled in Tussey v. ABB, Inc., that 401(k) plan fiduciaries breached their ERISA fiduciary duties by failing to monitor recordkeeping costs and revenue-sharing payments
The U.S. Departments of Labor, Health and Human Services, and Treasury issued a final rule under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“PPACA”) that requires group health plans and health insurance issuers to: (1) provide a summary of benefits and coverage (“SBC”) for each benefit package offered under the plan, and (2) make available, upon request, to participants and beneficiaries a uniform glossary of terms commonly used in connection with health insurance coverage.
The Department of Health and Human Services (“HHS”) issued a bulletin outlining proposed policies for implementation of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act’s (“PPACA”) mandate that insured plans in the individual and small group markets provide “essential health benefits” within the following 10 categories beginning in 2014:
The DOL published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (“NPR”) proposing regulations implementing the changes to the Family and Medical Leave Act (“FMLA”) made by the 2010 National Defense Authorization Act (“NDAA”).
In a landmark 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court upheld the “individual mandate” provision of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“ACA” or “Act”) as a valid exercise of Congress’ taxing power.