Benefits - General

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has issued final regulations (CMS-3819-F) that will make substantial changes to the Medicare home health agency Conditions of Participation (CoPs). These sweeping changes take effect July 13, 2017, and represent the most comprehensive changes to the

As many of you know, currently pending before the Supreme Court are consolidated cases from the Third, Seventh, and Ninth Circuits holding that, for religiously affiliated employers, employee benefits plans must initially be established by a church for the plans to be exempt from ERISA as “church pl

HHS and ACA Enforcement under the Influence of a Trump Administration. A summary of some of the essential facts about enforcement of the Affordable Care Act by the Department of Health and Human Services.

Passed swiftly by Congress, the 21st Century Cures Act (H.R. 34) seeks to hasten cures for killer diseases, among other things. President Obama is expected to sign the bill on Tuesday, December 13.

We know that data analytics is being used to influence a wide range of things such as the pair of shoes one might want to buy or what news is “trending” on Facebook. Similar tools are being applied to employer-sponsored group health plans. According to a recent HealthcareITnews article, vendors such

In IRS Notice 2016-70, the IRS announced a 30-day automatic extension for the furnishing of 2016 IRS Forms 1095-B (Health Coverage) and 1095-C (Employer-Provided Health Insurance Offer and Coverage), from January 31, 2017 to March 2, 2017. This extension was made in response to requests by employers

It has been reported that infamous bank robber, Slick Willie Sutton, once said, “I rob banks because that’s where the money is.” Data thieves, understandably, have a similar strategy – go where the data is.

Last week I made a presentation in the Omaha office of Jackson Lewis with the above title. I thought it might be helpful to outline the basic points of my presentation.

The Internal Revenue Service has announced its cost-of-living adjustments applicable to dollar limitations for retirement plans and Social Security generally effective for Tax Year 2017 (see IR-2016-141). Most notably, the limitation on annual salary deferrals into a 401(k) plan (along with the othe

The ‘Missive Gap’ — Employers to Cope Without Updated Plan IRS Determination Letters. For employers that sponsor and maintain individually designed qualified retirement plans (“IDPs”), such as 401(k), profit-sharing, or traditional defined benefit pension plans, beginning January 1, 2017, no IDP det

This is another in our series addressing the continuing deterioration of multi-employer defined benefit pension plans.

If you ask, plan administrators will tell you that for every deadline or specified time limit that is imposed by law upon plan participants for taking action with respect to an employee benefit plan, there are always a significant number of participants who come forward with one or more “excuses” wh

In Revenue Procedure 2016-47, which was released by the Internal Revenue Service on August 24, 2016, the IRS prescribes eleven circumstances in which taxpayers may qualify for automatic extension of the 60-day deadline for completing a rollover to an IRA or to an employer’s tax-qualified plan. The p

What the New Fiduciary Rule Means for Plan Sponsors and Fiduciaries. On April 8, 2016, the Department of Labor published its final rule on who is a fiduciary as a result of giving investment advice under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (the “New Fiduciary Rule”) as well as relate

Many employers have begun receiving Health Insurance Marketplace notices – letters stating that a particular employee reported that he or she wasn’t offered affordable minimum value coverage for one or more months during 2016. The letter states that the employee has been determined to be eligible fo

Last year’s announcement by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) of the elimination of the current five-year remedial amendment cycle system for determination letter approval of restated individually-designed qualified plan documents provoked bitter criticism and calls to reverse course. The Service c

In her latest video, Sue discusses how to meet the needs of the diverse workforce and different generations, including:

Like many other multiemployer pension plans, the Central States, Southeast and Southwest Areas Pension Fund was hit very hard by the financial crisis in 2008. In response, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act, or ERISA, was amended to allow Central States and other critically underfunded plan

Since the beginning of the year, Nexsen Pruet tax and employee benefits attorney Sue Odom has been producing videos about various legal issues that she follows as part of her law practice.

For the past several months, we have been reporting on the application filed by the Central States Southeast and Southwest Areas Pension Fund (“Central States”) to the Department of Treasury to reduce “core” benefits to participants. This extraordinary remedy is permitted by the Kline-Miller Multiem