The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (“ARPA”) kept many practitioners busy this spring/summer, as may be evident by our discussions here, here, here, and here.

Under one of ARPA’s most impactful provisions, employees who were involuntarily terminated or had their hours reduced (and who met certain other criteria) became eligible

Every few years, the IRS enhances its popular correction program for qualified retirement plans (the Employee Plans Compliance Resolution System, or EPCRS) to continue to encourage plan sponsors to correct any plan failures and bring their plans into compliance.  Revenue Procedure 2021-30 reflects this latest enhancement of IRS correction guidance.  Here is a summary of

The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA) is the latest federal COVID-19 relief bill, which the President signed into law on Thursday, March 11, 2021. ARPA includes new COBRA continuation coverage election, notice, and subsidy requirements; pension plan funding relief; and some cost-saving benefit opportunities employees may be able to leverage.  Some of these

As COVID-19 continues its upheaval of nearly all aspects of life, retirement plan administration included (see some of our prior discussions here, here, here and here), the Internal Revenue Service recently issued guidance providing additional relief for the sponsors of certain plans.  IRS Notice 2020-52 clarifies requirements for mid-year changes to a

We previously wrote about the Department of Labor’s proposed expansion of its safe harbor for electronic delivery of certain retirement plan disclosures required under ERISA.  The wait is finally over, with publication of the final rule (the “New Rule”) helped along by the DOL’s desire to alleviate some of the “disclosure-related problems being reported by

Penalties and fines for non-compliance with Washington, D.C.’s law requiring D.C. employers to offer commuter benefits to their D.C. employees will take effect beginning on November 14, 2019.  The law, which became effective on January 1, 2016, requires employers with at least 20 employees in D.C. to offer commuter benefits to their covered employees.  Please

Long on the wish list of practitioners and plan sponsors alike, self-correction of certain common plan document issues and loan failures is finally an option under the Internal Revenue Service’s Employee Plans Compliance Resolution System (“EPCRS”), newly minted via Rev. Proc. 2019-19.

It is no secret that the IRS is continually dealing with reduced

As employers and their third-party administrators begin to wrap-up their Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (“ACA”) reporting for the 2018 tax year, we’ve started to receive questions about what comes next.  As we discussed here, with the implementation of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (the “Act”), the ACA’s “individual mandate”

Benefit plan practitioners returned to their desks after the holidays to the surprising news that the Internal Revenue Service issued guidance that made sweeping changes to the user fees for the Internal Revenue Service’s Voluntary Correction Program (“VCP”).  (And notably more than one IRS agent has informally indicated they were surprised by the changes, which