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[Guidance Overview]
Charts: The Form 5500 Due Date and Others
"Some due dates are fixed, meaning that they always happen on a particular date every year. . . . Most dates relating to due dates for retirement plans are dependent on the Plan Year."
(Benefit Resources, Inc.)
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[Guidance Overview]
Preparing for the Perfect Storm: 401(k) Fee Disclosures (PDF)
"After developing a detailed profile, that profile can be used to obtain competing proposals or benchmark your fee information, which will allow you to document the decisions you make and the reasons for those decisions."
(Withum ERISA)
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[Guidance Overview]
Final DOL 408(b)(2) Disclosure Regulation
"The final regulation makes several changes and clarifications to the disclosure requirements, including a statement about the permissibility to use estimates and ranges of fees and confirmation of the ability to provide the disclosures electronically. Importantly, it coordinates the provisions on information regarding participant-directed plan investment options with the new participant-level disclosure requirements for such plans."
(Morgan Lewis)
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[Guidance Overview]
DOL Issues Final ERISA 408(b)(2) Regulations and Delays Effective Date (PDF)
"The Regulation also contains a final prohibited transaction class exemption that provides relief from the prohibited transaction rules for plan fiduciaries that enter into contracts or arrangements with service providers upon a mistaken belief that they have received all of the required disclosures."
(Dechert On Point)
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American Airlines Pension Default Q&A
"What can you expect if your own employer's plan were to be terminated or frozen? Here's a Q&A on the pension issues raised by the American Airlines bankrup.tcy."
(Reuters)
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Video and Text: Five Ways to Meet Your Retirement Goals
"For its part, the U.S. Department of Labor estimates that less than half of Americans have calculated how much money they might need when they stop working, and they suggest 70% of pre-retirement income as a rule of thumb."
(Yahoo! Finance)
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Taxpayers Underreporting Retirement Income
"Clarifying Form 1099-R would help the Internal Revenue Service identify more taxpayers who are underreporting their retirement income, according to a new report. The report, from the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration, noted that in a tax gap study for tax year 2001, the IRS estimated that as much as $4.2 bil.lion could be attributed to underreported retirement income."
(On Wall Street)
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Learning to Mistrust Your Financial Instincts
"Instead of portraying investors as idealized rational beings who always act in their own best interests — often the case in standard financial economics — behavioral economics casts them as 'normal' people who chase biases that have little connection to the statistical truth or the right thing to do."
(The New York Times; free registration required)
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[Opinion]
Where is the Public Debate on National Retirement Income Policy? (PDF)
"Our time spent in Washington discussing the need for a broad-spectrum overview of national retirement income policy has left us with the impression that, in general, policy makers and influential organizations that could show leadership on this issue have an inherent inability to see the forest for the trees. The public interest has been largely ignored in partisan ideological arguments over political aspects of retirement security issues."
(Buffin Partners Inc.)
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[Opinion]
New Pensions for New Times
"The time has come to move away from defined-benefit pensions, though it will have to happen gradually. Longer-serving employees in particular have rightly come to expect a defined pension and made decisions based on that assumption. Alaska, Colorado, Georgia, Michigan and Ohio are among the states that already have begun, in differing degrees, to move toward defined-contribution plans. By the middle of the last decade, two-thirds of private-sector pension money was already in such plans."
(Governing)
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[Opinion]
New Regulations Enhance Savers' Retirement Security
"Americans who use defined contribution retirement savings plans . . . or Individual Retirement Accounts will see their retirement security enhanced by two recently announced regulatory initiatives. The first is a series of Treasury Department/IRS proposed regulations that such individuals to use annuity-like guaranteed lifetime income products. The second is a final [DOL] rule requiring complete fee disclosure to employers sponsoring retirement saving plans."
(Brookings)
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Benefits in General; Executive Compensation
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[Guidance Overview]
2011 Decisions of Interest in ERISA Cases (PDF)
Pages 6-7 of 8 pages. Court Denies Plaintiffs' Attorneys' Claim for Fees in ERISA Action and Second Circuit Adopts Presumption of Prudence Standard in ERISA Stock Drop Litigation.
(Schulte Roth & Zabel)
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[Guidance Overview]
New York's Marriage Equality Act and its Effect on Welfare and Pension Benefits (PDF)
Page 5 of 8 pages. "Almost without exception, the Act provides that same-s.ex couples must be able to marry in New York, that the marriages of same-s.ex and opposite-se.x couples must be treated equally in all respects under the law, and that marriages must be valid regardless of whether the parties to the marriage are of the same or opposite se.x."
(Schulte Roth & Zabel)
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[Guidance Overview]
Top 10 ERISA Developments of 2011
"In sum, 2011 altered the legal landscape for plan sponsors, plan fiduciaries, third-party administrators, service providers, and plan participants. Although the precise consequences of the top ERISA developments of 2011 remain to be seen, they are certain to present new risks and challenges in 2012 and beyond."
(Jenner & Block)
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Chrysler's Hourly Employees to Get Bonuses Friday
"Chrysler reported its first net profit of $183 mil.lion — its first in 15 years — last week. For the first time since 2005, it also posted an operating profit of almost $2 bil.lion. The company's annual earnings were actually much higher, but Marchionne decided to pay back Chrysler's loans from the U.S. and Canadian governments early."
(The Detroit News)
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Present Law and Background Relating to the Interaction of Federal Income Tax Rules and Financial Accounting Rules
"The House Committee on Ways and Means [scheduled] a public hearing for February 8, 2012, on the interaction of tax and financial accounting on tax reform. This document, prepared by the staff of the Joint Committee on Taxation, provides an overview of earnings per share computations and the financial accounting rules for deferred taxes and uncertain tax positions. The document also provides examples of financial accounting for income taxes."
(The Joint Committee on Taxation)
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Relocation Benefits Are on the Move
"New trends in relocation are growing out of economic necessity as companies find new ways to move their talent while protecting both the employee and the company from the volatility of the real estate market."
(Workforce)
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Press Releases
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