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.

You should be eligible to participate in both the hDHP and the FSA, but not make contributions into the HSA.

To remain an excepted benefit, the employer contribution cannot exceed 2 times the employee contribution or $500, whichever is greater. The employee contribution is limited to $2500 for plan years which start 1/1/13 and after.

First, Cafeteria plans themselves do not file 5500s. That was done away with in April, 2003. The component parts are the welfare plans which must file if required. You must determine "Who is the employer"? You must count all participants in a controlled group. It could be a parent/child group or a brother/sister group. If there are more than 100 participants on the first day of the plan year, then the 5500 is required. How many is always the question. Do you file 1 for the Welfare Benefits Plan, or 1 for the medical, 1 for the dental, 1 for the life, etc. You have to look at the document. If no document, I would look at the language in the Employee Handbook. (Then I would get a plan document).

Thank you. That was very helpful.

HI, you can't give the money back based on contributions or claims. You could give the medical FSA money back equally to those who participated in the medical FSA and the daycare money back equally to those who participated in the DCAP. It is taxable.

Contact Ft William. We use their software to prepare Welfare Benefit 5500s. They are having a webinar about their SBC software on September 11. I will be "attending" as we also need to be able to prepare these for our clients.

One of the brokers I work with asked me for the brand new list of medications which lost their FDA status and went from Rx to otc. I have not seen such a list. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Our plan documents say "regularly scheduled to work". But if the person has NEVER worked a 40 hour week, that might be a tough sell to the carrier.

For Health and Welfare 5500s, does anyone know if you have to get a Schedule A or Schedule C information from the stop loss carrier? I have a broker who is telling me the stop loss carrier said this is not reported, but that doesn't sound right to me. Thank you.

Nancy, where did you see that this is a requirement in the wrap document and SPD? I found a blurb from someone that does 5500's but have not been able to confirm this anywhere. Also, have you seen anything which says an employer loses its small plan exemption if this language is not in the SPD?