What standard of review do courts use for the administrator’s interpretation of plan language and administrator’s factual determinations? The answer will depend on whether the plan document delegates discretion to the plan administrator. A court reviewing the denial of a claim of an ERISA plan that lawfully delegates discretionary ...
Buried within last month’s Budget Bill were three changes that will be important to both plan participants and employers starting in 2019. Generally, the changes will make it easier for plan participants to acquire funds through a hardship withdrawal. The Bill does not mandate employers to make any changes, but employers might want to amend ...
The Tax Cuts & Jobs Act changed the way that certain IRS limits would be indexed. One of the items that was changed was how the HSA contribution limits would be calculated. The indexing change was effective when the Act was passed in December. However, since the HSA contribution limits were already announced for 2018, most people (including myself ...
According to a recent survey done by the Defined Contribution Institutional Investment Association, 60% of all defined contribution plans currently have an automatic enrollment feature. Automatic enrollment has a proven track record of improving plan participation and increasing savings rates among participants. But the reality is that ...
No plan administrator wants to find out that the protected health information of their plan participants may have been compromised. HIPAA violations and breaches can cause a lot of headaches for a plan administrator and for health plan participants. And if you are one of the unlucky ones that has had to deal with that issue, your first concern was ...
Movin’ On Up was the theme song for The Jeffersons,* which was a 1970s sitcom that celebrated George and Louise Jefferson’s move to a deluxe apartment in the sky. Movin’ on up just became more expensive in 2018 after the changes included in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (the “TCJA”). First, the TCJA suspends the individual deduction ...
On January 22nd, Congress passed and President Trump signed a stopgap funding bill to reopen the government. Along with reopening the government, this bill also delayed the ACA’s Cadillac Tax for another 2 years so that it is not set to be effective until 2022. The 40% excise tax on high-value health plans was originally set to take effect in 2018. ...
While accountants and tax advisors are scrambling to figure out what steps, if any, their clients should be taking by year end due to the passage of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act, many of us in the benefits world are breathing a sigh of relief that some of the proposals relating to qualified retirement plans didn’t make it into the final Act. In a prior post
The IRS recently announced that it extending the deadline for large employers and self-insured group health plans to distribute their Forms 1095-C to employees and plan participants. The normal deadline to distribute Forms 1095-C is January 31st. This IRS announcement delays the deadline for distributing your 2017 forms until March 2 ...