Today, the Trump Administration released its goals for tax reform. Intended to be the most significant tax reform in American History, the Trump Administration outlined proposed changes for individuals and corporations.
For individuals, the tax plan proposes to reduce the number of tax brackets from seven to three (10%/25%/35%). The ...
In 2015, President Obama signed an executive order that, among other things, created an obligation for certain federal contractors to provide paid sick leave to certain employees. In 2016, the DOL published a final rule to implement the paid sick leave requirements on employers that enter into covered contracts with the federal government on ...
Even in the Trump era, HHS has not slowed its pursuit of monetary settlements for HIPAA violations. Recent settlements have included payments of $2,140,000 for allowing PHI to be publicly accessible on the internet; $2,200,000 for theft of unencrypted PHI stored on a pen drive, and $5,500,000 for disclosure of electronic PHI due to failure to ...
Recently, there has been a whirlwind of change and even more speculation about potential changes to the laws governing employee benefit plans. Some rules haven’t changed, but should not be forgotten. The compliance requirements relating to plan documents, remain intact and the risk of non-compliance could be lethal for an unwary ...
Generally, an individual seeking benefits under an ERISA plan must exhaust the administrative remedies as a prerequisite to filing a lawsuit. Typically, administrative remedies include submitting a timely appeal to the plan administrator, usually the employer, as described in the summary plan description and plan documents. The denial of ...
As it did last year, the IRS extended the deadline for distributing Form 1095-C to employees. Large and/or self-funded employers had until March 2, 2017 to distribute a Form 1095-C to all of their full-time employees and employees enrolled in a self-funded health plan, which was not as long of an extension as the IRS gave the prior year. The normal ...
We are smack in the middle of Form 1094 and 1095 reporting season, so we are fielding a lot of reporting questions. I have received the same question in various forms multiple times this week so I thought it was worthy of a blog post. The conversation usually goes something like “Our vendor submitted our Form 1094-C file to the IRS and it was accepted ...
Our previous post on the 21st Century Cures Act, outlined an important change to the ACA and the Internal Revenue Code. Small businesses may again offer stand-alone HRAs so long as they meet the requirements of a Qualified Small Employer Health Reimbursement Arrangement (“QSEHRA”), which will not be treated as group health plans and not ...
Yesterday evening, the House Ways and Means and Energy and Commerce Committees released the text of legislation they are introducing to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act. Taken together, these two pieces of legislation are called the American Health Care Act and, if enacted, will repeal many of the Affordable Care Act provisions and ...
Generally, fixed indemnity health plans are used to supplement coverage under a group medical plan. A fixed indemnity plan should be a type of excepted benefit that provides tax free cash payments to participants and beneficiaries. However, it’s easy to botch the tax benefits and unintentionally subject these indemnity plans to ERISA ...