Articles Discussing General Topics In Employee Benefits.

You didn’t know it was a thing?  Or maybe, like most, you just lost track of what day it is?  Or maybe it ranks somewhere behind New Beer’s Eve (the day before the end of prohibition) and National Tartan Day, both of which are most certainly things and also fall

A federal court in New Jersey recently applied the arbitrary and capricious standard of review for a denial of benefits claim despite the enactment of an anti-discretionary statute in Minnesota, which governed the benefit plan policy. Hocheiser v. Liberty Mut. Ins. Co., 2021 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 32154 (D.N.J. Feb.

Employers should not overlook the income tax reporting and withholding compliance issues when providing incentives, rewards, bonuses – whether for vaccination, holiday gifts, safety programs, attendance, and the like. The calculation of overtime pay could be impacted as well.

A spate of recent legislation and IRS guidance promises to make 2021 an active year for any employer seeking to provide its employees with a competitive array of employee benefits.  My “top 5” list of employee benefits that an employer should introduce or enhance in 2021, to improve retention and/or

By: 9th Circuit Decision Requires Employers to Reevaluate Expense Reimbursement Procedures

This week, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals held that an employer’s per diem expense reimbursement payments functioned as compensation for work rather than business expense reimbursements. As a result, the employer was required to factor those per diem payments

The Consolidated Appropriations Act (CAA), 2021, enacted late in 2020, imposes a new requirement on group health plans to ensure compliance with the Mental Health Parity and Addiction Equity Act (MHPAEA). Unlike many of the other provisions of the CAA that affect group health plans, the MHPAEA requirement under CAA

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass.) introduced the Emergency Pension Plan Relief Act of 2021 (EPPRA) on January 21, 2021. EPPRA represents the latest legislative attempt to address the well-documented multiemployer pension crisis.

EPPRA is significant in that it is the first legislation introduced by Chairman Neal under the

Employers will now have additional options to address participants’ unspent contributions to dependent care or health flexible spending accounts (FSAs) resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. The Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021 (H.R. 133, P.L. 116-260), signed into law on December 27, 2020, provides temporary relief for employees that were unable to

Beginning in 2022, employer-sponsored health plans will be required to pay providers certain emergency and out-of-network charges that would have otherwise been balance billed to participants.

The Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2021, generally provides the annual funding for the federal government and, in almost 5,600 pages, contains several important rules giving further COVID-19 relief, including the expansion of eligibility for Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and the Employee Retention Tax Credit.

The Consolidated Appropriations Act (CAA), 2021, which was signed into law December 27, 2020, includes provisions designed to increase transparency in employee health benefit plans in four key areas.

The IRS released final regulations on the provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (“TCJA”) that added Section 402(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, effective January 1, 2018, special rollover relief for qualified plan loan offset (“QPLO”) amounts.

As per our initial blog on the TCJA change, distributing a

The Internal Revenue Code is famously complicated, and changes to discrete parts of the code—such as those adopted by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA)—have a notorious history of leading to unpredictable and unintended consequences. One such consequence may require prompt action by publicly-traded companies to mitigate

Section 162(m) of the Internal Revenue Code (“Code”), which disallows the deduction by any publicly held corporation with respect to certain compensation paid to a covered employee over $1,000,000, was amended by the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (“TCJA”).  One change made to Section 162(m) of the Code as

The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) has announced that it has adopted a rule to limit a registered person from being named a customer’s beneficiary, executor, or trustee or from holding a power of attorney or similar position of trust on behalf of a customer. The new rule becomes effective February 15, 2021.