PODCAST: Williams Mullen's Benefits Companion - Can Employers Impose a Health Insurance Surcharge on Plan Participants Not Vaccinated for COVID-19?
Over the years, plan sponsors and administrators have wrestled with the question of what to do with the accounts of participants who left employment years earlier and cannot now be located. ...more
We are pleased to present our annual End of Year Plan Sponsor “To Do” Lists. This year, we present our “To Do” Lists in four separate SW Benefits Updates. This Part 1 covers year-end health and welfare plan issues. Parts 2,...more
The Department of Labor (DOL) announced that it has finalized, together with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation (PBGC), the third and final round of revisions to the Form 5500 Annual...more
Cryptocurrencies and digital assets—such as bitcoin, ether and non-fungible tokens (NFTs)—have become some of the hottest investment products in recent years. The growing interest has inevitably led to retirement plan...more
Retirement plans are increasingly subject to cybersecurity issues, and the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) is taking notice. On April 14, 2021, the DOL published cybersecurity guidance “for plan sponsors, plan fiduciaries,...more
The Department of Labor’s Proposed Prohibited Transaction Exemption and Its Impact on Recommendations to Plans, Participants and IRAs (Part 3): Investment Adviser Considerations - On December 18, 2020, the DOL issued its...more
The Department of Labor (DOL) has issued long-awaited guidance on what it views as appropriate procedures for retirement plans to locate missing or nonresponsive participants. Plan sponsors and fiduciaries of all retirement...more
COBRA: an acronym that strikes fear (and understandable confusion) into the hearts of many employers. If you have 20 or more employees, you are subject to the often equivocal requirements of the Consolidated Omnibus Budget...more
Plan participants and their beneficiaries may now have extra time to exercise some of their rights under the employee benefit plans in which they participate. ...more
Seyfarth Synopsis: On Tuesday, shortly after the IRS extended deadline relief to employee benefit plans, the U.S. Department of Labor granted its own relief for a number of deadlines related to the administration of employee...more
A financial advisor called me and asked me if there was a problem that an insurance policy paid by a 401(k) plan had the policy in the name of the participant. Considering it was a plan asset, I thought so. If the participant...more
On August 14, 2019, the IRS issued Revenue Ruling 2019-19, providing guidance to both tax-qualified plan administrators and participants on the tax treatment of plan distribution checks that are not cashed. ...more
In Teufel v. Northern Trust Co. (April 11, 2018), the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit confirmed that a prospective change in the benefit formula for a defined benefit pension plan constituted neither an...more
Since at least 2010, the IRS has publicly stated that forfeitures must be used by the end of the plan year in which the forfeiture occurred, or as soon as possible thereafter. Some IRS pre-approved prototype or volume...more
A Department of Labor (“DOL”) official recently disclosed a new DOL investigation initiative focusing on the adequacy of defined benefit plan procedures to locate and pay out benefits to terminated vested participants. The...more
The Department of Labor (“DOL”) has recently implemented an initiative to investigate the manner in which defined benefit plans of large employers comply with the required minimum distribution rules set forth in Section...more