An employer signed to a collective bargaining agreement may be obligated to make contributions to a multiemployer pension plan. That pension plan is likely severely underfunded. Most contributing employers are generally familiar with the concept of withdrawal liability. They at least know that it’s a big scary number. But, it should not be ...
In our experience, employers generally have procedures in place that ensure immediate termination of access to an employer’s network and computer systems upon the employee’s termination of employment. The termination of access almost always happens right away. And while you may be thinking, yes this is our procedure, do you have audit ...
Most employee benefit plans offered through an employer are subject to ERISA. There is a safe harbor exemption from ERISA for certain voluntary plans. Traditionally, the types of programs that may qualify as voluntary include life, vision, dental, disability, critical-illness and accident insurance plans. However, these benefit programs can ...
Generally, the purchaser in an asset sale is not responsible for liabilities incurred by the seller prior to sale. Of course, there are exceptions. An important exception to the general rule is found in the context of multiemployer pension plans. It’s an exception that can be catastrophic for the unwary buyer. If the buyer has notice of the ...
As a reminder, in 2015 Congress enacted legislation requiring a substantial increase in the penalties for a wide-range of employee benefit plan related violations. See our previous blog post for more background information on these changes. The initial spike in the amount of civil penalties were designed to be a “catch-up” adjustment to ...
Not really. On President Trump’s first day in office, he issued a number of executive orders. One of these orders dealt with the Affordable Care Act. The order instructs federal agencies to “exercise all authority and discretion available to them to waive, defer, grant exemptions from, or delay the implementation of any provision or ...
Shortly after the ACA was signed into law, we started our Benefits InSight Blog. The law was changing so fast under the ACA that we needed a way to push updates on new guidance out to our clients faster than our historical monthly newsletter. The tagline for our blog was The ACA – the only constant is change. So here we are almost 7 years after the passage ...
January is a popular month for wellness programs. Many employers wrap up open enrollment and get through the holidays and then hold their wellness fairs or rollout their biometric screenings and health risk assessments. But as of January 1, 2017, employers have a new obligation when it comes to their wellness programs.
Last year the EEOC issued ...
While many of us were in our party hats waiting for the ball to drop, a federal judge in Texas was issuing a decision in Franciscan Alliance v. Burwell granting a nationwide injunction prohibiting HHS from enforcing a portion of the nondiscrimination rules under Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act. As we have previously posted, Section 1557 ...
On December 22, 2016, the IRS revised its FAQs on Form 1094-C and Form 1095-C reporting. The FAQs generally track the final regulations, but provide some additional detail on reporting minimum essential coverage (MEC) and Health Reimbursement Accounts (“HRAs”) under the ACA. An HRA is a form of MEC and enrollment in an HRA must be reported ...