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March 25, 2014          Get Retirement News  |  Advertise
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Employee Benefits Jobs

Pension Consultants/Administrators
Leading Northern NJ Actuarial Firm
in NJ

Defined Contribution Plan Administrator
Retirement, LLC - Series Two
in IL, OK, SD

ERISA Verification Process Coordinator
GuideStone Financial Resources
in TX

Trust Operations Accountant 2
Wells Fargo
in VA

Client Relations Manager
ING
in GA

RVP - External Wholesaler (Retirement Plans)
ING
in GA

Plan Document Analyst
T. Rowe Price
in MD

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Webcasts and Conferences

The Benefits of Self-Funding Your Health Plan: How to Maximize Savings and Reduce Legal Risk
March 27, 2014 WEBCAST
(Thompson Interactive)

IRS Changes Rollover Rule
March 27, 2014 WEBCAST
(Convergent Retirement Plan Solutions, LLC)

What Business Associates Need to Know about HIPAA
April 10, 2014 WEBCAST
(Clearwater Compliance)

Form 5500 and Other Filing Updates
April 24, 2014 WEBCAST
(American Society of Pension Professionals & Actuaries (ASPPA))

Form 5500 for Health and Welfare Plans: Preparation and Filing Basics
April 24, 2014 WEBCAST
(Thomson Reuters / EBIA)

New DODD-FRANK Guidance: What You Need to Know to Comply
May 22, 2014 WEBCAST
(ABA Joint Committee on Employee Benefits)

2014 Fall Forum
October 20, 2014 in LA
(Ascensus)

View All Webcasts and Conferences


  LinkedIn   Twitter   Facebook Hand-picked links to the web's best news articles,
official guidance, jobs, webcasts and more.
[Guidance Overview]

ACA Pay or Play: Is Your Dependent Coverage Compliant?
"The final regulations state that 'dependents' include biological children and adopted children. Step-children and foster children do not need to be covered. Coverage must be provided through the end of the month in which a child attains age 26. Generally speaking, if an employer subject to these rules fails to offer coverage to a full-time employee for any day of the calendar month, the employer is treated as not having been offered coverage during that entire month and could be subject to a penalty for that month." (Stinson Leonard Street)  


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[Guidance Overview]

ACA Considerations for Employers with Unionized Workers
"The ACA forces unionized employers to reassess the health benefits that they provide employees and determine which employees should be eligible to receive them. In addition, employers must develop new strategies for negotiating health benefits, with the goal of minimizing their exposure to ACA penalties, satisfying the ACA's coverage and benefit requirements, and preserving flexibility to make changes to comply with the ACA's complex and evolving requirements." (Jones Day)  

[Guidance Overview]

The Monthly Measurement Method: Is There a 'There', There?
"The Monthly Measurement Method is aptly named: an employer identifies full-time employees based on the hours of service for each calendar month....[G]enerally, for any given month, an employee is or is not full-time and entitled to an offer of coverage.... An employer will not be subject to excise taxes with respect to an employee because the employer does not offer him coverage until the first day of the fourth calendar month after he otherwise becomes eligible. This is helpful if you have a part-time employee who starts to pick up additional hours and becomes full-time -- it is essentially a 'first three months free' rule.... The rules are clear that this relief can only be used once per period of employment of an employee." (Benefits Bryan Cave)  

[Guidance Overview]

Employers Must Begin Reporting Details of Health Coverage to IRS
"The scope and detail of Code Section 6056 will make reporting a significant burden for Pay or Play employers. The default, or 'general,' reporting method requires an employer, on a month-by-month basis, to identify each full-time employee and provide details about the health coverage offered to that employee and his or her spouse and dependents. This will require employers to integrate and reconcile data from their payroll vendors, third party administrators and human resources personnel. Data collection must begin in 2014 for the many employers using the 'lookback' method to determine employees' full-time or part-time status for 2015." (Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP)  

[Guidance Overview]

Putting the ACA Health Reform Pay or Play Penalty Puzzle Together: Finding the Safe Harbor That Fits
"Employers need to be careful when relying on a safe harbor or transition rule for the penalty tax to understand that relief on the penalty tax does not mean that they are relieved from the reporting requirements. The relief and transition rules for the penalty tax do not apply to the related reporting requirements. Similarly, relying on a reporting transition rule or alternative method of compliance does not mean that such relief extends to protect the employer from the penalty tax or penalties related to failing to report." (Winstead PC)  

[Guidance Overview]

HIPAA Update 2014: Why and How You Must Comply (PDF)
10 pages. Excerpt: "[T]he Omnibus Rule extends HIPAA to business associates of covered entities and raised the stakes on regulatory compliance. This memorandum outlines key actions that covered entities and business associates should take to help ensure their compliance and avoid HIPAA penalties." (Holland & Hart LLP)  

[Guidance Overview]

CMS Issues 2015 Notice of Benefit and Payment Parameters (PDF)
"The new requirements are primarily relevant for entities participating in the individual and small group health insurance markets, whether on or off an Exchange. Many of the more significant changes will have a direct effect on health insurance issuer revenue and federal funding levels... [C]hanges that will affect issuer revenue [include] modifications to the reinsurance and risk corridors programs that affect both 2015 and 2014 calendar year operations." (McDermott Will & Emery)  

Capping Hours to Avoid ACA Costs? Beware of ERISA
"To achieve the dual goals of managing health-care costs and avoiding ERISA liability, a company must enact any changes in its workforce management in thoughtful and measured steps. Because a Section 510 suit turns on a finding of specific intent to interfere with an employee's health-care rights, employers must be prepared to combat any misperception that their actions were taken for that purpose." (CFO)  

Ramifications of Hobby Lobby ACA Case Could Go Beyond Birth Control Coverage
"'If we get a very broad opinion in favor of Hobby Lobby's position, it isn't just contraception, but a host of other federal regulations that may be challenged based on the idea that they substantially burden a person's religious exercise,' Darrell Miller, JD, law professor at Duke University, [said] ... 'Corporations, or their owners or directors, may assert that they can refuse to cover HIV treatment, or blood transfusions, or vaccinations.'" (MedPage Today)  

Eleventh Circuit Rules Employees Can't Take FMLA Leave for 'Potential' Absences in the Future
"There is a fine line between present incapacity and future incapacity, and employers should be sure to clarify if there is any ambiguity.... [J]ust because an employee has a chronic condition doesn't necessarily mean they are incapacitated from working.... Despite the appellate court's ruling for the employer, FMLA training still is critical." [Hurley v. Kent of Naples, No. 13 -10298 (11th Cir. Mar. 20, 2014)] (FMLA Insights)  

Qualified Health Plan (QHP) Issuer Resources (PDF)
102 presentation slides. Excerpt: "This presentation provides an overview of CMS resources available to Issuers, including ... Health Insurance Oversight System (HIOS/Issuer Portal); CMSzONE [an online social platform]; Registration for Technical Assistance Portal (REGTAP); Systems for Electronic Rate and Form Filing (SERFF); [and] Collaborative Application Lifecycle Tool (CALT) ... The purpose of this training is to introduce issuers to the resources available to assist in a working relationship with CMS.... The following will be presented for each resource: [1] Description of the resource and its use to issuers; [2] Direction on how to gain access; [3] Basic instruction on how to use the resource." (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services [CMS], U.S. Department of Health and Human Services)  

Brand-Name and Generic Prescription Drug Use After Adoption of a Full-Replacement, Consumer-Directed Health Plan with a Health Savings Account (PDF)
"A full-replacement HSA plan was associated with a 4.7 percentage-point rise in the generic-drug dispensing rate (GDR) after one year, and settled 3.4 percentage points higher after four years.... At the end of the four-year follow-up period, GDR was greater by 4.5 percentage points for hypertension, 15.4 percentage points for dyslipidemia, and 7.8 percentage points for asthma/COPD.... GDR increases were due to individuals discontinuing use of brand-name drugs without substituting generic therapy. After one year under the full-replacement HSA plan, 0.43 fewer generic and 0.95 fewer brand-name prescriptions were filled, on average." (Employee Benefit Research Institute [EBRI])  

Regs Show the Reactive Nature of Health Care Policymaking
"Clearly, payers' concerns about the effective administration of insurance market reforms and product repurposing are being heard. And, as their experience reveals or creates new problems with 'black letter' implementation, comparable one-time workarounds and permanent fixes will be made to accommodate them." (HighRoads)  

America's Underinsured: A State-By-State Look at Health Insurance Affordability Prior to the New Coverage Expansions
"[In] 2012, there were 31.7 million insured people under age 65 who were underinsured. Together with the 47.3 million who were uninsured, this means at least 79 million people were at risk for not being able to afford needed care before the major reforms of the Affordable Care Act took hold. At the state level, the percentage of the under-65 population who were either uninsured or underinsured ranged from 14 percent in Massachusetts to 36 percent to 38 percent in the five highest-rate states -- Idaho, Florida, Nevada, New Mexico and Texas[.]" (The Commonwealth Fund)  

AHIP Urges Congress to Add New Coverage Tier
"When asked how Congress could fix problems with the health insurance exchanges, [America's Insurance Plans President and CEO Karen Ignagni] said she would like to see Congress create a lower tier of coverage with lower costs that would allow people to gradually get into the insurance exchanges and ensure healthier people are part of the risk pool.... Ignagni suggested adding another tier that would offer less comprehensive benefits at a lower premium, noting that some individuals and small businesses preferred the old market choice with high deductibles and low premiums[.]" (FierceHealthPayer)  

Benefits in General; Executive Compensation

[Guidance Overview]

Employment Tax on Settlement Agreements in ERISA Cases
"The IRS position is that a settlement payment made to a former employee in lieu of ERISA plan benefits would be wages for FICA tax purposes because the settlement payment arises from the employment relationship. Furthermore, related attorney's fees may also be includable as wages and thus subject to FICA taxation depending on how those fees are paid." (Haynes and Boone, LLP)  

Supreme Court Agrees with IRS, Finds Severance Payments Are Taxable
"The U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Tuesday that taxes are due for Social Security and Medicare on severance packages paid to workers who are laid off involuntarily, overturning a lower court ruling that could have triggered a wave of payroll tax refund requests from U.S. businesses.... The tax refund at issue was small, but the IRS said the stakes in the case were huge because, if Quality Stores had won, thousands more refund claims could have resulted, possibly totaling as much as $1 billion." (Reuters)  

Text of Supreme Court Decision: Severance Payments are Subject to FICA (PDF)
Excerpt from the syllabus: "The severance payments at issue are taxable wages for FICA purposes. FICA defines 'wages' broadly as 'all remuneration for employment.' ... As a matter of plain meaning, severance payments fit this definition: They are a form of remuneration made only to employees in consideration for employment.... FICA's statutory history sheds further light on the definition. FICA originally contained definitions of 'wages' and 'employment' identical in substance to the current ones, but in 1939, Congress excepted from 'wages' '[d]ismissal payments' not legally required by the employer ... Since that exception was repealed in 1950, FICA has contained no general exception for severance payments." [U.S. v. Quality Stores, No. 12-140 (S.Ct. Mar. 25, 2014)] (Supreme Court of the United States)  

Avoid Costly Mistakes on Tax Returns Involving Restricted Stock and Restricted Stock Units
"On tax returns involving restricted stock and restricted stock units, many potential errors involve the reporting of sold shares on IRS Form 8949 and Schedule D of IRS Form 1040.... After selling any or all of the shares at vesting, you still need to report this sale on IRS Form 8949 and Schedule D even though you are also including it as part of your compensation income on Line 7 of IRS Form 1040.... Even though you never purchased the stock, your tax basis for reporting the stock sale in column (e) on Form 8949 is the amount of compensation income at vesting that appeared on your W-2 (you already reported it on your tax return).... Another way to mistakenly double-report income can occur if you do not realize that your W-2 income in Box 1 already includes stock compensation income." (myStockOptions.com)  

Press Releases

NAPA Honors Kathleen Kelly with Leadership Award
National Association of Plan Advisors (NAPA)

NAPA Taps Steven Dimitriou as NAPA President for 2014-2015
National Association of Plan Advisors (NAPA)

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