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February 16, 2012 Get Retirement News  |  Advertise  |  Unsubscribe  |  Past Issues  |  Search

Employee Benefits Jobs


Webcasts and Conferences

"403(b) Plans: Coverage and Nondiscrimination Testing" Web Seminar
Nationwide on February 23, 2012 presented by SunGard Relius

"Practical Guide to Plan Fee Disclosures" - A 3-part Web Seminar
Nationwide on February 28, 2012 presented by SunGard Relius

"The Final, Final Service Provider Fee Regulations – Finally!" Web Seminar - Encore Presentation
Nationwide on February 22, 2012 presented by SunGard Relius

"What We Learn from the 401(k) Compliance Questionnaire" Web Seminar
Nationwide on March 8, 2012 presented by SunGard Relius

DOL Audit Initiatives-Are You a Target?
in New York on March 15, 2012 presented by WEB (Worldwide Employee Benefits Network ), New York Chapter

ERISA Conference: Employee Benefits in an Era of Retrenchment
in Missouri on March 29, 2012 presented by Washington University School of Law

Final SBC Guidance for Employer Health Plans: Getting Ready for New Open Enrollment Disclosures
Nationwide on April 4, 2012 presented by Thomson Reuters / EBIA

Hedge Funds, Real Estate and Other Alternative Investments
in California on July 16, 2012 presented by International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans

Just Released DOL Pension Fee Disclosure Regulations - Are You Ready?
Nationwide on February 24, 2012 presented by International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans

Navigating the Last Weeks of ERRP: Tighter Regulations, Audits
Nationwide on March 1, 2012 presented by International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans

Portfolio Concepts and Management
in Pennsylvania on May 21, 2012 presented by International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans

What Every Employer Needs to Know about Social Media, the Internet and Electronic Communications
in Massachusetts on March 6, 2012 presented by New England Employee Benefits Council


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[Guidance Overview]
New PPACA Benefit Summary Rules Clarified
"If their open enrollment periods start before September 23, 2012, health insurers and employers that sponsor health plans will not have to provide new summaries of benefits and coverage, or 'SBCs,' to new enrollees and existing health plan participants later this year, under new final regulations implementing the 2010 health care reform law." (Ogletree Deakins)


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[Guidance Overview]
Summaries of Benefits and Coverage Back on the Schedule and Other Employee Benefits News
"The revised rules and template were published on February 9, 2012 (available at www.dol.gov/ebsa/healthreform). The revised rules and template are an improvement over the originals, but are still going to pose challenges to employers." (Vorys)

[Guidance Overview]
Summary of Benefits and Coverage Final Regs May Impact You As Early As Open Enrollment 2012 (PDF)
"Summary of benefits and coverage ('SBC') final regulations are available. Insurers, employers and administrators — pay close attention to these rules because they will apply to open enrollment that begins on or after September 23, 2012." (Groom Law Group)

[Guidance Overview]
Final Rules On PPACA Summary of Benefits and Coverage
"The final rules eliminate the requirement to provide premium information, reduce the number of coverage examples from three to two and include a 'best efforts' standard to address plan designs that are difficult to describe on four pages . . . ." (HRS Insight)

Small Area Variations and the ACA's Coverage Expansions
"Of course, we have always known that states with the largest uninsured populations will benefit the most from the ACA's coverage expansions. The new analysis, however, shows that there will be real variations even within these states. For example, in the state of California where KFF is headquartered, the share of the non-elderly population who could benefit ranges from 5-36%, mirroring the variation for the country as a whole. The ranges are large in smaller states, too — from 13-29% in Utah, 5-19% in Wisconsin, and 7-23% in Virginia." (Kaiser Family Foundation)

Employers' Self-Insured Health Plans Complicate Birth Control Coverage Deal
"[T]he administration announced the compromise plan before it had figured out how to address one conspicuous point: Like most large employers, many religiously affiliated organizations choose to insure themselves rather than hire an outside company to assume the risk. Now, the organizations are trying to determine how to reconcile their objections to offering birth control on religious grounds with their role as insurers — or whether there can be any reconciliation at all. And the administration still cannot put the thorny issue to rest." (The New York Times; free registration required)

Making a Place for Small Businesses in Health Exchanges
"From agricultural co-ops to trade associations, small businesses frequently pool their resources and increase their buying power, leveraging better deals for their members. That's the very idea behind the Small-Business Health Options Program." (California HealthLine)

Health Status and Hospital Prices Key to Regional (PDF)
"Differences in health status explain much of the regional variation in spending for privately insured people, but differences in provider prices — especially for hospital care — also play a key role, according to a study by the Center for Studying Health System Change (HSC) based on claims data for active and retired nonelderly autoworkers and dependents. Although autoworkers' health benefits essentially are uniform nationally, health spending per enrollee in 2009 varied widely across 19 communities with large concentrations of autoworkers, from a low of $4,500 in Buffalo, N.Y., to a high of $9,000 in Lake County, Ill." (National Institute for Health Care Reform)

Chicago Public School Officials Cracking Down on Big Payouts for Sick Days
"[A new sick-day policy] will be proposed next week and apparently will end excessive sick-day payouts. The proposal follows a Feb. 3 Better Government Association report about a CPS policy that allows departing employees to pocket up to 325 unused sick days in cash on their way out the door." (Chicago Sun-Times)

[Opinion]
50 Doctors for Single Payer Urge Supreme Court to Strike Down Individual Mandate
"An amicus curiae brief challenging the constitutionality of the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act — and noting that, by contrast, a single-payer, Medicare-for-All or VA-for-All-type system would be constitutional — was filed Tuesday by 50 physicians who support single payer." (Single Payer Action)

Benefits in General; Executive Compensation

[Guidance Overview]
Important New SEC Guidance on the Proper Wording of Say on Pay Proposals on the Proxy Card
"[On February 13, 2012, The] SEC Division of Corporation Finance published a new 'Compliance and Disclosure Interpretation' (CDI) regarding the proper wording of Say on Pay proposals on the proxy card . . . ." (Winston & Strawn LLP)

[Guidance Overview]
Section 409A Basics: Deferral Elections and Discretionary Bonuses
"Employers always seem surprised that an employee can be expected to make a deferral election more than one year before the employee even knows whether he or she is eligible for a bonus. Somehow that just doesn't seem reasonable. Yet, every time we check, we find that is what Code Section 409A requires." (Verrill Dana, LLP)

[Guidance Overview]
Another Unexpected Surprise for International Assignees: Section 457A (no, Not 409A!) of the U.S. Tax Code
"[T]he lesser known Code section 457A creates new complexity, applicable where deferred compensation, including many types of equity compensation, is earned by U.S. taxpayers who perform services for certain non-U.S. corporations and partnerships located in a jurisdiction that is tax indifferent (or more colloquially, a tax haven). In general, if section 457A applies, the period that compensation may be excluded from a U.S. taxpayer's taxable income is limited to no more than 12 months after any service-based vesting condition is satisfied. If a vesting period is based on performance (rather than on the passage of time), the income exclusion may be longer than 12 months, but the amount is subject to an additional 20% tax when paid." (Littler)

Private Company Incentive Pay Practices Survey
"Respondents report increased usage of both short- and long-term incentive programs since 2007. Short-term incentive . . . usage has increased to 95% from 79%, while long-term incentive . . . usage has increased to 61% from 35%." (WorldatWork)

New York State Senate Passes Bill to Restore Commuter Tax Benefit
"The legislation would fully restore the state's monthly pre-tax transit benefit, which would be $240 for 2012, that was cut when the federal government did not approve an extension by the December 31, 2011 deadline. It would also create parity with the current federal and state pre-tax benefits which help offset parking costs for commuters who drive. That benefit increased to $240 on January 1st" (newsLI.com)

Same-S.ex Marriage Legal in Washington State
"Employers in Washington State need to adjust their policies, plans and documents to accommodate the state law making same-s.ex marriage legal. But employers there must remember that while same-s.ex marriage is legal in Washington State, federal law and regulation do not recognize same-s.ex marriage and same-s.ex spouses. Therefore, employers in Washington State will have to contend with the added complexity of treating same-s.ex spouses differently for purposes of state law and federal law." (Thompson)

Do Public School Teachers Really Receive Lavish Benefits?
"[A] recent paper by Jason Richwine of the Heritage Foundation and Andrew Biggs of the American Enterprise Institute claims that public school teachers enjoy lavish benefits that are more valuable than their base pay and twice as generous as those of private-sector workers . . . . According to Richwine and Biggs, this makes teachers' total compensation 52 percent higher than fair-market levels and amounts to $120 bil.lion 'overcharged' to taxpayers each year." (Economic Policy Institute)

Employee Benefit Committees Figure Out What Benefits Are Most Important to Employees and Assist with Benefit Negotiations
"Big or small, governments face the challenge of providing benefits that meet employee needs at a sustainable price. A number of state and local governments are instituting the help of employee benefit committees: voluntary groups of union and non-union employees that discover what benefits are most important to employees, align those with available funds and assist with benefit negotiations." (Governing)

How the Risk of Displacement for Older Workers Has Changed
"Although in the past older workers were less prone to displacement compared with prime-age workers, this paper finds that older workers are now more likely to be displaced, conditional on education, manufacturing industry, and tenure. Declining tenure, a higher incidence of displacement in manufacturing, and a higher labor force participation among older workers largely explain the convergence of displacement rates among older and prime-age workers." (Social Science Research Network)

Employee Ownership Update for February 15, 2012
NCEO Executive Director Loren Rodgers discusses the DOL's re-proposal of its regulation on plan fiduciaries, the White House budget and ESOPs, a Stanford Webinar on exporting ownership culture to China, and the reaction to the Iowa governor's ESOP initiative. (National Center for Employee Ownership)

Press Releases



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