Last week, Graydon’s Lyndsey Barnett, Employee Benefits and Executive Compensation attorney partnered with VonLehman CPA & Advisory Firm and Joanna Berding, ERISA Attorney at Pension Corporation of America (PCA), as they discussed the numerous legal changes that have occurred as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic and the changes ...
As discussed in our prior blog posts, the PCORI fee, thought dead in 2019, was reinstated and the amount updated. Knowing the new fee amount of $2.54 was step one. However, plan sponsors who wanted to move beyond step one could not because the IRS had not revised the Form 720.
Fortunately, late last week, the IRS did update the Form 720. You can find the ...
Many employers have been forced to make the difficult decision to reduce their workforces due to the economic impact of the coronavirus pandemic. A significant reduction of employees can have a widespread impact on many aspects of a business, and can even impact an employer’s retirement plan if the reduction has led to a “partial termination.”
As mentioned in our blog post last week, while the PCORI fee has been resurrected by the IRS, the amount of the fee for plan years ending after October, 2019 had not been updated. Today, the IRS released Notice 2020-44 which updates the fee amount and provides some limited transition relief.
The new amount used to calculate the PCORI fee for policy ...
If you are feeling a sense that the rules around benefits haven’t changed enough in the last three months, this is a reminder of a change made during the long ago time of December 2019. In those ancient times, the PCORI fee rose from the dead. We all thought the annual PCORI (Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute) was set to expire back in 2019 ...
Earlier this month, the DOL released its first updates to the model COBRA Notices since 2014. The new notice does not reflect any legal changes, but instead provides more information regarding the interaction of COBRA and Medicare. The new notices explain there may be advantages to enrolling in Medicare rather than COBRA. And it highlights that ...
As mentioned in our blog last week, the Department of Labor has finally released updated regulations on electronic disclosure; for the first time since 2002! These regulations provide a new safe harbor method of electronic distribution. Needless to say, these regulations are very welcomed (given the vast amount of technological changes that ...
Earlier this month, the Department of Labor/Employee Benefits Security Administration and the IRS (the “Agencies”) issued a Joint Rule to extend certain time frames as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. As discussed in previous posts, the Joint Notice requires that all benefit plans subject to ERISA extend various participant deadlines ...
Among the many pages of DOL issued guidance and relief for plan sponsors one provision has avoided a lot of attention. In Notice 2020-21, discussed in some of our other blog posts, in addition to the extension of certain time frames, the DOL provided an extension of deadlines for providing retirement and welfare plan notices to participants.
The ...
While it may be too early to be thinking about next year for some and hard to think about anything but dealing with the pandemic, others are already knee deep in making health plan changes for 2021. For those already planning for next year, the IRS just announced the new 2021 contribution limits for a health savings account (“HSA”), as well as ...