In April of this year, the Department of Labor issued a suite of rules (i) expanding the class of persons and entities who are fiduciaries for purposes of ERISA and the Internal Revenue Code; (ii) providing two new prohibited...more
Employer-sponsored group health plans and health insurance issuers (or carriers) are subject to information reporting requirements under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), including the obligation to report taxpayer...more
We reported in a recent post on proposed regulations dealing with, among other things, the treatment of hospital indemnity or other fixed indemnity insurance products in the group market. This post takes a closer look at the...more
8/27/2016
/ Affordable Care Act ,
Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) ,
Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) ,
Employer Group Health Plans ,
Health and Welfare Plans ,
Health Insurance ,
Hospitals ,
Indemnity ,
Minimum Essential Coverage ,
NAIC ,
Supplemental Insurance
This post continues our examination of the Department of Labor’s suite of final fiduciary and conflict of interest regulations. Our previous posts discussed the newly expanded definition of “investment advice fiduciary”; the...more
7/15/2016
/ Best Interest Contract Exemptions ,
Brokers ,
Conflicts of Interest ,
Covered Transactions ,
Department of Labor (DOL) ,
Disclosure Requirements ,
Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) ,
Fiduciary Duty ,
Insurance Agents ,
Internal Revenue Code (IRC) ,
Prohibited Transactions ,
Recordkeeping Requirements
The Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service recently issued comprehensive proposed regulations governing nonqualified plans subject to tax under Internal Revenue Code § 457. Code § 457 prescribes the tax rules...more
7/8/2016
/ Deferred Compensation ,
Forfeiture ,
Income Taxes ,
Internal Revenue Code (IRC) ,
IRS ,
Non-Compete Agreements ,
Proposed Regulation ,
Section 409A ,
Section 457(f) ,
Severance Agreements ,
Tax Exempt Entities ,
U.S. Treasury ,
Vesting
On June 10, the Departments of Treasury, Labor, and Health and Human Services (The “Departments”) issued a set of proposed regulations dealing with expatriate health plans, excepted benefits, lifetime and annual limits, and...more
This post continues our examination of the Department of Labor’s suite of final fiduciary and conflict of interest regulations. Our prior posts discussed the newly expanded definition of “investment advice fiduciary” and the...more
6/13/2016
/ Best Interest Contract Exemptions ,
Broker-Dealer ,
Conflicts of Interest ,
Department of Labor (DOL) ,
Employee Benefits ,
Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) ,
Fiduciary Duty ,
Incentive Compensation ,
Individual Retirement Account (IRA) ,
Insurance Brokers ,
Internal Revenue Code (IRC) ,
Investment Adviser ,
Principal Transaction Exemption ,
Registered Investment Advisors ,
Retirement Plan ,
Sales Commissions
The employer community was sent into a frenzy with the Department of Labor’s release on May 18, 2016 of its final white-collar overtime regulations. Just two days before however, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission...more
Last month the U.S. Department of Labor published a suite of final regulations governing the fiduciary status of, and prescribing conflict of interest rules that apply to, persons who provide investment advice to...more
With this post, we begin our substantive explanation of the Department of Labor’s suite of final fiduciary and conflict of interest regulations. For the financial services industry, and for the retirement plans and IRAs,...more
Both the Internal Revenue Code (the “Code”) and the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (“ERISA”) contain rules that aggregate trades and businesses under common control. For the most part, these rules are intended to...more
After six years in the hopper, the Department of Labor finally issued final fiduciary regulations late last week that will greatly impact a wide variety of stakeholders. The Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA)...more
The benefits world was set abuzz late last year with Equal Employment Opportunity Commission v. Flambeau, Inc., in which the Federal District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin upheld the validity of Wisconsin-based...more
Recently, we reported on Gobeille v. Liberty Mutual, in which the Supreme Court invalidated the Vermont all-payer claims data base law. Applying what appeared to us as a straight-forward application of existing ERISA...more
The Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) made the regulation of employee benefit plans principally a matter of Federal concern. ERISA broadly and generally preempts—or renders inoperative—state laws that...more
For the last half of 2015, we spent a good deal of time explaining the Affordable Care Act reporting requirements that applied to carriers and large employers. This post examines the how of ACA reporting. In particular, it...more
In Q&A format, recently issued Notice 2015-87 addresses a number of pressing issues that have arisen under the Affordable Care Act (ACA), including that law’s employer shared responsibility rules, information reporting...more
Issued at the end of last year, Notice 2015-87 provided detailed guidance on a host of topics. The notice has been referred to colloquially in some quarters as the “pot luck” notice. Among other things, the notice, in Q&A 4,...more
This post concludes our half-year series of posts focusing on the Affordable Care Act’s reporting requirements. These requirements are challenging in the extreme. Carriers and employers, and their vendors, service providers...more
Under the Affordable Care Act’s reporting requirements that have been the subject of this series, statements to responsible individuals (a/k/a “employees”)—i.e., Forms 1095-B and 1095-C—must be furnished on or before January...more
The Treasury Department and the IRS this week issued Notice 2015-87 that addresses, among other things, the effect of Health Reimbursement Account (HRA) contributions, cafeteria plan flex credits and opt-out payments on...more
It took a while, but most employers and their advisors have finally gotten the hang of the Affordable Care Act’s employer shared responsibility rules. That is, they understand generally that:
1. “Applicable Large...more
Affordability—i.e., whether health coverage is “affordable”—occupies an important place in the Affordable Care Act’s (ACA) regulatory scheme. Under that law’s individual mandate, no penalties are imposed for failure to...more
Last week we examined the reporting challenges associated with employee terminations, changes in status, and breaks in service under the monthly measurement method. As we explained, “[t]he final regulations under Code § 4980H...more
The final regulations under Code § 4980H establish two—and only two—methods for determining an employee’s status as full-time: the monthly measurement method and the look-back measurement method. Under the former (as the name...more