The Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA), part of the Department of Labor (“DOL”), is an agency that enforces Title I of ERISA. At the end of 2021, EBSA released a fact sheet summarizing its fiscal year (FY) 2021 enforcement statistics. In 2021, EBSA restored Over $2.4 billion to employee benefit plans, participants, and beneficiaries. The total monetary recoveries included $499.5 million in benefits Read More

The Required Amendments List (the “List” or “RAL”) is an annual list of changes in retirement plan qualification requirements (see Revenue Procedure 2016-37). It also establishes amendment deadlines for individually designed plans. Generally, the Required Amendments List will include an item after the issuance of any guidance for the item, including any model amendment. However, the IRS has the discretion to Read More

The IRS recently issued proposed rules that would make permanent and automatic the 30-day extension for furnishing reporting forms for the Affordable Care Act (“ACA”) to individuals. The IRS has also stated that the proposed relief is available for 2021 reporting. This should provide some relief for those Applicable Large Employers (“ALEs”) and health plan providers nervously preparing for the looming January 31, Read More

When a retirement plan participant files a lawsuit to recover damages from harm due to the plan sponsor’s alleged breach of fiduciary duty, employers and plan administrators must furnish certain plan documents on demand. While the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (“ERISA”) requires the production of relevant materials, employers and plan administrators are not required to undertake any extensive searches Read More

There are many emerging issues for fiduciaries of 401(k) and 403(b) plans. These issues include the Department of Labor’s (“DOL”) regulation of ERISA investment duties and ESG considerations, as well as its recently re-proposed rule regarding the same. Compared to the prior rule enacted by the Trump administration at the end of 2020, the latest proposal represents a significant shift in the DOL’s attitude towards ESG Read More

On November 15, 2021, President Biden signed the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (the “IIJA”) into law. The President stated that the public would start seeing the infrastructure package’s effects within the next two to three months. A group of bipartisan Senators reached an agreement with the Biden Administration on an infrastructure package that contains various elements of the President’s American Jobs Read More

The Department of Labor (“DOL”) has increased its focus on the cybersecurity practices of plan sponsors and their service providers. As a result, the DOL has started to ask comprehensive cybersecurity questions in plan audits. It seems apparent that the DOL is concerned with the misuse of confidential participant data, in addition to the theft of plan data or assets. The DOL has focused on the practice of some Read More

In November 2021, a California federal court dismissed a suit claiming that LinkedIn Corp. kept underperforming funds in its $817 million retirement fund. The judge in the case, in re: LinkedIn ERISA Litigation, (5:20-cv-05704), U.S. District Court (N.D. Cal.), U.S. District Judge Edward J. Davila, dismissed the proposed class action but with leave to amend and add additional facts. Plan participants Douglas G. Read More

Before 2020, the IRS historically mandated that an employer must adopt an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP), and any other retirement plan, no later than the end of the first tax year in which the employer wanted to claim a deduction for plan contributions. Effective December 31, 2019, Section 201 of the Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement Act of 2019 (“SECURE Act”) extended this deadline from Read More

Effective November 15, 2021, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced a final rule finalizing the provisions of the September 6, 2016, interim final rule that adjusted the maximum civil monetary penalty (CMP) amounts, for inflation, for all agencies within the Department of Health and Human Services. These include penalties that apply to violations of the Health Insurance Portability and Read More