News Archive

"The flexibility to use either the W-2 correction method or the in-plan Roth rollover correction method is helpful, but both approaches present challenges.... The safe harbor for BRF nondiscrimination requirements may help mitigate some administrative complexities.... [O]perational challenges will require careful planning and close coordination among payroll, recordkeeping, and plan administration teams."  MORE >>

"For distributions prior to April 15, [although the IRS website] states that earnings on excess deferrals are reported on Form W-2, it is silent on the reporting on the excess deferral itself, other than to state that it is taxable. However, the Form 1099 instructions are quite clear that Form 1099-R should only be used for distributions from governmental 457(b) plans and not private tax-exempt 457(b) plans. Therefore, absent guidance, it is reasonable to reflect the full deferral amount, including excess amounts, in Box 12 (Code G) of Form W-2 in the year of the deferral (and the participant should report the excess amount on their Form 1040)."  MORE >>

"Employer sponsors of self-funded group health plans that are subject to [HIPAA] should take immediate action to revise and redistribute their HIPAA Notice of Privacy Practices (NPP). For plan sponsors of fully insured group health plans, the NPP obligation is typically handled by the insurance carrier. But this NPP requirement does apply to plan sponsors of Medical Flexible Spending Accounts and Health Reimbursement Arrangements (because these are forms of self-funded group health plans).... The deadline to update and distribute the new NPP is February 16, 2026."  MORE >>

"This case promises to be critical to how courts handle 'underperformance' litigation -- cases in which plaintiffs challenge the prudence fiduciary/committee investment decisions based on a retrospective analysis of the targeted plan funds vs. other investment options." [Anderson v. Intel Corp. Inv. Policy Comm., No. 22-16268 (9th Cir. May 22, 2025; cert. pet. granted Jan 16, 2026, No. 25-498)]  MORE >>

"On January 8, 2026, the US District Court for the Southern District of New York dismissed (with prejudice) plaintiffs' claims ... holding both that plaintiffs lacked standing to sue and that they had failed to state a claim under ERISA. The case is unusual because it did not, as other PRT cases have, involve Athene, and the Verizon annuity contracts included certain protections with respect to, e.g., reinsurance and the treatment of plan assets." [Dempsey v. Verizon Comm. Inc., No. 24-10004 (S.D.N.Y. Jan. 8, 2026)]   MORE >>

"New York's Department of Health (DOH) has posted the 2026 regional covered-lives assessment (CLA) rates and percentage surcharges for graduate medical education (GME) under the state's Health Care Reform Act (HCRA).... The GME CLA rates and percentage surcharges vary among eight regions, and the applicable rate depends on where the covered individual resides or receives in-state hospital care."  MORE >>

"[T]he New Jersey Family Leave Act (NJFLA) ... now applies to much smaller employers, employees qualify far more quickly, reinstatement obligations are clarified and strengthened, and NJFLA is expressly coordinated with Temporary Disability Insurance (TDI), Family Leave Insurance (FLI), and New Jersey's statutory Earned Sick Leave. Paid leave and job protection are no longer separate conversations. They are one compliance system."  MORE >>

"When Fidelity restricted third-party advisor access to employee retirement accounts in late 2024, citing cybersecurity concerns, the move caught plan sponsors off guard. The nation’s largest 401(k) provider had made a unilateral decision that directly affected how participants could work with their chosen financial advisors. Charles Schwab soon followed. Now HR leaders face a critical question: Who bears the fiduciary liability when recordkeepers impose restrictions that employers never authorized?"  MORE >>

"[T]he Protecting Prudent Investment of Retirement Savings Act (HR 2988) ... would significantly restrict the consideration of non‑pecuniary factors in retirement plan investing.... It would also impose new nondiscrimination rules for service provider selection, tighten fiduciary obligations with respect to proxy voting, and require enhanced disclosures for brokerage windows."  MORE >>

"[T]he ever-growing labyrinth of state and local paid leave laws, including paid sick leave and family and medical leave laws, continues to develop in 2026. Some states have expanded their existing leave provisions, while others are enacting wholly new leave programs. As paid leave requirements grow and change, so too do compliance difficulties and litigation risks for multijurisdictional employers. [This article provides] a summary of key developments in state and local leave laws, as well as states to watch as the year progresses."  MORE >>

"These novel lawsuits challenging voluntary benefits are not only notable for what they allege, but also because they implicate consultants and brokers.... [P]laintiffs may be leveraging data gathered regarding service provider compensation disclosed pursuant to the [CAA] ... [E]mployers should consider creating a process to monitor voluntary benefit programs offered to their employees, including the commissions charged by the various brokers, akin to what many employers maintain to monitor retirement plans and health plans."  MORE >>

"[M]ore than half of Americans (51%) have either stopped or reduced their retirement savings in the past six months due to the current economic environment. Two in three (66%) say they have not been able to contribute to their savings as much in the past six months due to the current economic environment.... The majority of Americans (59%) say they are prioritizing saving for health-related expenses over other financial goals due to anticipated premium hikes."  MORE >>

"As of December 31, 2025, any person or entity, including hiring companies, platforms or individuals, can contribute funds to a contractor's portable benefits account without compromising the worker's independent contractor status.... [B]usinesses can deduct 100% of their contributions as a business expense....A 'portable benefit account' is a special account ... designed to let workers fund a variety of benefits, including: [1] Health insurance plans; [2] Income replacement or disability coverage; [3] Life insurance; [4] Retirement savings."  MORE >>

"On a per capita basis, [national health expenditures (NHE)] increased by 6.5% in 2023 and 6.1% in 2024.... Of the 2024 per capita increase, 2.5 percentage points stemmed from price increases and 3.6 from the use and intensity of healthcare goods and services[.]"  MORE >>

"While the drugs may ultimately prove to be truly transformative for health, they are currently a net cost to the system. For a patient's care to 'break even,' the price of the drug would need to drop by 40% to 80%, or the patient would need to remain healthy and off the drug (without regaining weight) for many years, a scenario that current data on 'rebound weight gain' suggests is incredibly difficult to achieve."  MORE >>

"Successor beneficiaries (the beneficiary of a beneficiary) do NOT get to use any of their own personal information or status to dictate the payout structure of an inherited IRA. It does NOT matter who the successor beneficiary is or what the successor's relationship to the first beneficiary is.... The successor simply 'steps into the shoes' of the previous beneficiary and follows the exact same payout program that applied to the original Roth IRA beneficiary, with one exception[.]"  MORE >>

10 pages. "This article provides a detailed discussion of the final regulations ... regarding the catch-up contributions for people ages 60-63 and those catch-up provisions related to Roth amounts.... While the Age 60-63 increased catch-up limit appears relatively easy to navigate, it is clear that Congress's activities in relation to Roth catch-up contributions has created quite the hornet's nest of issues."  MORE >>

"As reflected in the January 2026 poster, recent amendments brought forth by Assembly Bill 2499 (2024) and Assembly Bill 406 (2025), expanded the list of situations for which employers must allow paid sick leave ... These uses extend beyond traditional illness-related leave and may require employers to rethink how sick leave requests are evaluated and documented. The updated poster clearly communicates these additional permissive uses of paid sick leave to employees."  MORE >>

"the court will consider the 'meaningful benchmark' requirement that lower courts have applied when evaluating claims that retirement plan investments were mismanaged. Under that standard, plaintiffs must identify comparable alternative investments to show that plan fiduciaries acted imprudently. The Intel plaintiffs argue that the benchmark test has been applied inconsistently across federal circuits and sets too high a bar for workers seeking relief." [Anderson v. Intel Corp. Inv. Policy Comm., No. 22-16268 (9th Cir. May 22, 2025; cert. pet. granted Jan 16, 2026, No. 25-498)]  MORE >>

"In their petition for consideration of their case by the Supreme Court, the plaintiff basically argued that the application of a 'meaningful benchmark' standard baseline for consideration required 'that a complaint must identify a "relevant comparator" fund with "similar objectives" against which the performance of the challenged fund can be measured' -- even though ... nothing in ERISA's text explicitly requires such a rule." [Anderson v. Intel Corp. Inv. Policy Comm., No. 22-16268 (9th Cir. May 22, 2025; cert. pet. granted Jan 16, 2026, No. 25-498)]  MORE >>

"Even where a condition lacks definitive objective diagnostic testing, plan administrators may reasonably require objective evidence of functional impairment ... and may discount post-elimination functional capacity evaluations if they are not tied to contemporaneous medical findings. The case also highlights the continued importance of plan language defining 'regular occupation' as work performed in the national economy, which can foreclose arguments based on the claimant's real-world job demands or composite occupation theories." [Hans v. Unum Life Ins. Co. of Am., No. 25-3595 (E.D. Pa. Jan. 15, 2026)]  MORE >>

"President Donald Trump will announce affordability reforms, which will include permitting retirement plan investors to take penalty-free distributions for a down payment on a home ... Retirement savers are currently permitted to spend up to $10,000 from an IRA for a down payment on a home without a tax penalty, though they would owe ordinary income tax if applicable. Savers can also take a loan from their 401(k) to pay for a home. Permitting such distributions would likely require new legislation."  MORE >>

"Because ERISA is a remedial statute grounded in trust law, and because fiduciaries exclusively control the information necessary to assess causation, the burden of proof on causation properly rests with the fiduciary once a breach and loss are shown. Any contrary rule would undermine ERISA's core purpose, reward informational asymmetry, and render fiduciary duties unenforceable in practice. So, the obvious question is -- why would the EBSA submit an amicus brief that is totally inconsistent with legal precedent and tries to burden plan participants with an impossible task[.]" [Pizarro v. Home Depot, No. 22-13643 (11th Cir. Aug. 2, 2024; cert. pet. filed Dec. 3, 2024; motion to dismiss filed Jan. 7, 2026)]  MORE >>

"Despite higher overall treatment costs, diabetes and weight loss patients on second-generation GLP-1 medications experience meaningfully slower medical cost growth compared to matched non-users -- though maximizing this benefit hinges heavily on therapy adherence ... Diabetes patients using GLP-1s demonstrated a six percentage point improvement in medical cost growth relative to non-users over 12 to 30 months, while weight loss users showed three percentage point improvements over an 12 to 18-month window.... [U]sers maintaining at least 80% adherence to therapy nearly doubled these gains."  MORE >>

"The Intel case is not about whether private equity is 'good' or 'bad.' It is about whether ERISA fiduciaries can hide the governing investment contracts, invent benchmarks, and still claim compliance with the strictest fiduciary law in the country. If Intel prevails, the consequences will not stop with private equity. They will extend directly to target-date funds, annuities, private credit, and any opaque product that depends on secrecy to survive scrutiny." [Anderson v. Intel Corp. Inv. Policy Comm., No. 22-16268 (9th Cir. May 22, 2025; cert. pet. granted Jan 16, 2026, No. 25-498)]   MORE >>