SLuskin

I don't think you can change a plan year that has already started at all. I would not do anything here without at least one legal opinion. And not the opinion of the union attorney.

The transit benefit is NOT under a Cafeteria Plan. Cafeteria Plans fall under Section 125 of the Code and Transit Plans are under Section 132 of the Code. The 2-17 limits are $255 for parking and $255 for transit. A participant can have both. If the employer permits additional post tax deductions, those would be treated as any post tax deduction permitted by that employer. The new limits for 2018 will be $260 for each parking and transit.

The plan documents that we provide either state that the full amount is available for everyone, or that employer contributions are made monthly, and therefore would be prorated. As long as the plan document and SPD are clearly written and non-discriminatory, either way should be permissible.

We have that come up all the time, and we just write the new wrap document and spd with the remaining plan number. If the other plans are filed as final, we do not prepare documents for those. However, we do include a statement in the new wrap document that says that this "new plan" is a consolidation of the following plan numbers .....

We can help you with this. We do 5500 filings and Delinquent Filer Voluntary Compliance Program filings every day. Alot of this depends on how many actual plans you have. Do you have 1 employee benefit plan with a number of parts (life, health, etc) or do you have a life plan, a health plan, etc. Your ERISA documents will tell you this.

Exec-U-Care used to offer this benefit all the time. Now they are not issuing new plans but allowing existing grandfathered plans to continue. However, there is another carrier, RSL Advantage, that is issuing new plans. They are both marketed as being fully insured.

We can do the Welfare 5500s from anywhere and have been doing this for 20 years. Diversified Administration, Inc. You can contact me at susan@div125.com.

If it's a welfare plan, they have a delinquent filer voluntary compliance program. They would need the last 3 years to have all the detail and then as much as still available for the other years. If this is for a qualified plan, I can't comment because we only work with Welfare plans.

Does anyone know if the PPACA 90 day elimination period also applies to health FSA?

No, it is not. It would be if it were the plan of another employer.

A court order is a valid reason to either add or drop someone from a plan. It might depend if legal separation is a status in your state - it is NOT in Florida. You are either married or divorced. If the divorce isn't final, there could be a court order to cover the person until it is final. Then, assuming you are over 20 employees the divorced spouse is entitled to 36 months of COBRA. If under 20, then it goes by the COBRA of that state.

I called the DOL about this 2 weeks ago. They told me that as long as we have the last 3 years complete, just do the best we can with everything else. I had an ERISA attorney tell me the same thing.

But can you consider the HRA linked if you are not permitted to be in the base health plan?

A county is saying that if an employee has an employed spouse and the county employee is eligible for the spouse's employer's coverage, they are not eligible to be covered under the county plan. Can you do that? Next, the county is saying that they will reimburse the employee for the cost of covering the county employee under that employee's spouse's plan. Then, they will reimburse the out of pocket expenses that the employee incurs if that expense would have been covered under the county plan. Do you think that after 2014 they will still be able to offer that? There is no maximum stated in their benefits description, but it seems unlikey that this unlinked HRA would satisfy the no annual no lifetime max requirements that will be in effect. Thanks.

It seems like it should be assuming that the "child" is of an age that it would be permissible to add him/her to the plan.