Employee Benefits Jobs
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Webcasts and Conferences
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[Guidance Overview]
IRS Issues Guidance on Transportation Fringe Benefits
"[Rev. Rul. 2014-32] allows terminal-restricted debit cards that can be used at vendors that sell items in addition to transit fare media as long as the card issuer adds modifications so that the card only works for the purchase of transit fare media. Media bought online with such a card may include a delivery charge that would qualify for the exclusion. The ruling also provides that a transit company smart card that includes separate accounts for transit, for non-transit (such as parking), and for both can qualify if the employer buys the card and allocates all of the funds to the transit account, but not if the employee buys the transit card with a debit card provided by the employer."
(Wolters Kluwer Law & Business)
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[Advert.]
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[Guidance Overview]
California Imposes Mandatory Sick Leave Law
"California's sick leave law requires mandatory paid sick leave accrual measured from July 1, 2015, forward; however, the notice, posting and other requirements are effective as of January 1, 2015. Because this deadline is fast approaching, employers with employees working in California should carefully review their sick and PTO policies, as well as payroll policies for reporting such time on wage statements. Every employer also should review its new-hire procedures and notices, and workplace posting and recordkeeping policies, because California's sick leave law affects each of these items."
(McDermott Will & Emery)
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2015 Planning for Health & Welfare Benefit Plan Operations (PDF)
Topics include: [1] Preparing for ACA reporting; [2] Cafeteria plan amendments; [3] 2015 out-of-pocket maximum limits; [4] Wellness programs issues; [5] Waiting and orientation periods; [6] HPID requirement delayed; and [7]Calendar of health and welfare benefit plan compliance tasks.
(Buck Consultants at Xerox)
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Some Tips on ACA Compliance as January 1, 2015 Approaches
"If you are between 50 and 99 FTEs, you might be eligible for transition relief, but it is not automatic.... To determine whether or not you are an applicable large employer, you have to look at the controlled group, not the individual company.... Employers cannot satisfy the obligation to offer coverage to employee by reimbursing them for premiums paid through the exchange.... To avoid a payment for failing to offer health coverage, large employers (that's more than 100 in 2015) need to offer coverage to 70 percent of their full-time employees in 2015. The 95% rule goes into effect in 2016."
(Fox Rothschild LLP)
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HHS Proposal Places Greater Emphasis on Summary of Benefits and Coverage
"For payers participating in the public marketplace, [CMS] is proposing to ... require individual payers to provide an SBC for 'plan variations,' which essentially are reduced cost-sharing options for essential health benefits, as part of the Qualified Health Plan (QHP) process.... [T]here have been rumblings that HHS, DOL and IRS are considering adding coverage examples beyond diabetes and child birth.... In addition, after three years of minimal change, there's a possibility that the SBC format could change for the 2016 plan year."
(HighRoads)
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Strategies Being Used by Local Governments to Address Rising Health Care Costs
"The top cost drivers of local government health care increases were increased claim costs (64 percent); prescription drugs (57 percent); an aging workforce (46 percent); insurance company price increases (45 percent) and federal health care policy (45 percent). Fifty-seven percent of respondents increased cost sharing of premiums paid by employees ... Nineteen percent of those reporting health plan changes shifted employees to a high-deductible plan with a health savings account and 14 percent established a health reimbursement arrangement."
(Center for State & Local Government Excellence)
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[Opinion]
The Coming End to the Health Insurance Business as We Know It -- and What Brokers Can Do About It
"[W]ithin 5-10 years employers will be out of the health risk business. [This article provides] a plan for what ... benefit brokers should do to prepare for this possible change in the market.... [T]he cost of the employee's health insurance will not be priced by employer. It won't be a function of average age of the employee population, claims experience, or any of the standard underwriting/pricing rules today. In fact, health insurance will most likely become an individually purchased product and the insurers of the future may not be the companies that dominate the market today. The players and the structure of the market will be vastly different."
(Joe Markland)
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Benefits in General; Executive Compensation
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[Official Guidance]
Text of IRS Announcement 2014-34: Realignment of Technical Work Between the Tax Exempt and Government Entities Division and Office of Associate Chief Counsel (Tax Exempt and Government Entities) (PDF)
"On January 2, 2015, the authority to prepare revenue rulings, revenue procedures, announcements, and notices, and to issue technical advice (including technical advice memoranda (TAMs)), certain letter rulings, and certain information letters on matters involving exempt organizations, qualified retirement plans, and IRAs will be shifted to TEGE Counsel. TEGE Counsel will be responsible for the issuance of letter rulings except for the letter rulings listed [in this announcement]. In addition, TEGE Counsel will be responsible for ruling on issues involving employer deductions for contributions to welfare benefit funds.... The Employee Plans office of TE/GE (Employee Plans) will retain the authority to issue determination letters and the Exempt Organizations office of TE/GE (Exempt Organizations) will retain the authority to issue determination letters, including determination letters on
the exempt status of organizations under Sections 501(c) and 521."
(Internal Revenue Service [IRS])
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[Guidance Overview]
New Auditing Standard Will Require Auditors to Review Executive Compensation Arrangements
"[T]he new auditing standard requires the auditor to consider: [1] Obtaining an understanding of compensation arrangements with senior management other than executive officers, including incentive compensation arrangements, changes or adjustments to those arrangements, and special bonuses; [2] Inquiring of the chair of the compensation committee ... and any compensation consultants ... regarding the structuring of the company's compensation for executive officers; and [3] Obtaining an understanding of established policies and procedures regarding the authorization and approval of executive officer expense reimbursements."
(Winston & Strawn LLP)
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Setting Annual Incentive Targets When Commodity Price Drops
"One of the hardest challenges for a Compensation Committee is to set annual incentive performance targets at levels that are lower than the prior year's actual performance. It is difficult to explain to shareholders when share price is dropping, how lower targets are appropriately challenging and why the executive team should be rewarded for lower performance. The need to retain key executives is generally not a sufficient answer."
(Meridian Compensation Partners, LLC)
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[Opinion]
PCAOB Expands Purview of Accounting Profession to Review Executive Compensation Arrangements
"[The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB)] and the SEC are either assuming that auditors have sufficient expertise in compensation arrangements to handle this undertaking or that the firms of which they are a part have this expertise internally to which the auditors may refer. At the Big 4, this is probably the case. They have massive staffs and are able to engage specialists to handle such complex questions. How about the next tier of auditing firms? Do they have this expertise?"
(Benefits and Compensation with John Lowell)
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[Opinion]
World's Dumbest Idea: The Push for 'Shareholder Value' Created Environment Where Executive Compensation Trumped All
"In the last two decades one can see the increasing dominance of stock-related pay. In the last decade some two-thirds of total CEO compensation has come through stock and options.... [O]ptions aren't the same thing as stock. They give executives all of the upside and none of the downside of equity ownership.... [I]ncentives don't always work in the way that one might expect ... [W]hen incentives get too high people tend to obsess about them directly, rather than on the task in hand that leads to the payout. Effectively, high incentives divert attention away from where it should be."
(GMO LLC)
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Press Releases
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