As a reminder, all defined contribution plans that are on a pre-approved document, including 401(k) and profit sharing plans, must be restated every 6 years. This restatement is necessary even if you have made no design changes to your plan. The current restatement cycle for defined contribution plans opened on August 1, 2020 and ends on July 31 ...
Recently, the U.S. Labor Department issued new guidance regarding the holding or investing in cryptocurrency by 401(k) retirement plans. This new guidance specifically impacts retirement plans that permit participants to use self-directed brokerage accounts to trade individual stocks on their own.
Under the new guidance ...
We frequently receive questions from clients about what to do when an employee misses the window to enroll their new spouse or child. Often the employee has a compelling reason and the employer wants to help, because if they didn’t, they wouldn’t be calling me, they would just deny the enrollment as late. In the past few months, I have received a few ...
The SECURE Act, which was passed in late 2019, provided several mandatory changes affecting defined contribution plans. While plans do not have to adopt their SECURE Act amendments until December 31, 2022, plans have already been administering many of the provisions. And while many plans have already been amended and have applied its ...
COVID rules are confusing and ever-changing. The CDC changes its mind so frequently on who and how to quarantine that the rules may change twice during your quarantine period and we are still waiting (as of the moment I am writing this at least) to see whether the Supreme Court is going to uphold the law on vaccine mandates (you can learn more about ...
We are in the middle of yet another COVID surge. Testing sites have lines blocks long and at-home COVID tests are flying off the shelves as soon as the shelf is replenished. In response to the latest surge, the Department of Labor, Health and Human Services, and the Treasury jointly released guidance yesterday that requires group health plans to ...
Since the start of the pandemic, there has been a swell of guidance that permits employers to revise their Section 125 plans (a/k/a Cafeteria Plans) to provide various relief to plan participants. We previously blogged in detail about these changes that were permitted under the Coronavirus Aid Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act)
As mentioned in our prior blog post, effective January 1, 2022 for calendar year plans, the ability of HSA plans to cover telehealth at 100% is ending. If you have not already amended your plan to account for this expiration, you should do so now. Any amendment will need to require plans to charge a reasonable fee for telehealth and apply any fees to ...
The IRS released its annual update for the cost-of-living adjustments for 2022. In contrast to the few changes made in the cost-of-living adjustments last year, there are widespread increases for 2022. As you can see from our chart below, almost all IRS limits were affected by this year’s cost-of-living adjustments, with the exception of ...
It is again time for plan sponsors to distribute their annual notices to participants. Outside of the normal changes to plan COLAs (which we expect to be announced anytime) and investment expense ratios, plan sponsors will want to consider and incorporate any changes made to their plan in the past year into this year’s annual notice. As a ...