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Employee Benefits Jobs
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Webcasts and Conferences
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[Official Guidance]
Text of DOL Final Regs: Annual Funding Notice for Defined Benefit Plans
"[T]he final rule is substantially the same as the proposal (published in November 2010) with respect to specific funding information disclosed in the notice.... Significant changes from the proposal include: [1] exempting certain terminating single-employer plans from furnishing their funding notices; [2] establishing alternative methods of compliance for multiemployer pension plans that have terminated by mass withdrawal and for plans described in section 412(e)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code ... and [3] including a rule of administrative convenience that if an otherwise disclosable material event first becomes known to the plan administrator 120 days or less before the due date of the funding notice, the event is not required to be disclosed in the notice.... The appendices ... contain a model notice for single-employer plans and a model notice for multiemployer
plans.... Use of a model notice is not mandatory."
(Employee Benefits Security Administration [EBSA], U.S. Department of Labor [DOL])
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[Official Guidance]
Text of IRS Publication 915 for 2014: Social Security and Equivalent Railroad Retirement Benefits (PDF)
"This publication explains the federal income tax rules for social security benefits and equivalent tier 1 railroad retirement benefits.... This publication covers ... [1] Whether any of your benefits are taxable. [2] How much is taxable. [3] How to report taxable benefits. [4] How to treat lump-sum benefit payments. [5] Deductions related to your benefits, including a deduction or credit you can claim if your repayments are more than your gross benefits."
(Internal Revenue Service [IRS])
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[Guidance Overview]
IRS Employee Plans News 2015-1, February 2, 2015 (PDF)
Topics include: [1] Reference lists of changes in plan qualification requirements -- tools to help you keep your plan document up-to-date; [2] EPCU projects: [a] Fraud and internal controls -- fraud linked to weak internal controls and risky investments, [b] Reporting taxable distributions -- include early distributions as income and on Form 5329, [c] Form 5500 and other forms' line item error; and [3] New forms and publications: [a] Form 1098-Q -- Qualifying Longevity Annuity Contract Information, [b] Publication 590-A (2014) -- Contributions to Individual Retirement Arrangements (IRAs), and [c] Publication 590-B (2014) -- Distributions from Individual Retirement Arrangements (IRAs).
(Internal Revenue Service [IRS])
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[Guidance Overview]
Text of DOL Fact Sheet: Annual Funding Notice for Defined Benefit Plans
"The final regulation contains minor conforming amendments to two other Code of Federal Regulation sections. One change was made to the Department's summary annual report regulation ... to implement the PPA's repeal of ERISA summary annual report requirement for plans subject to section 101(f) of ERISA. The other change was made to the Department's small plan audit waiver regulation[.]"
(Employee Benefits Security Administration [EBSA], U.S. Department of Labor [DOL])
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[Guidance Overview]
Final Annual Funding Notice Requirements for Defined Benefit Plans
"The final regulations confirm that a plan that is merged or consolidated into another plan does not have a funding notice requirement for its final plan year.... While ERISA does not explicitly require plans to have a formal investment policy, DOL reaffirmed that it would be 'rare' for a plan not to have one, which reflects a de facto requirement to have such an investment policy.... The final regulations clarify some aspects of the material event disclosures[.]"
(Kilpatrick Townsend)
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Fiduciary Best Practices: A Proposal and Request for Public Comment from the Institute for the Fiduciary Standard (PDF)
9 pages. "Best Practices strive to reflect the best legal scholarship and current practices ... This entails assessing risks and costs and the wide variety of strategies in differing facts and circumstances. This requires both prudence and flexibility to meet diverse client risk profiles and levels of client sophistication. This we have strived for. On this and the particulars of the eleven Best Practices we seek industry and public comment."
(Institute for the Fiduciary Standard)
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Proposed Set of Best Practices Aims to Codify Fiduciary Duty of Advisors
"Taken together, the best practices are a response to what the [Institute for the Fiduciary Standard] describes as pervasive investor confusion about the business models of advisors and broker-dealers, including how they're compensated and what services they offer, a picture that's further muddied by convoluted explanations of fees and expenses. Once the best practices are finalized, the institute will begin work on a verification system where a third party would evaluate an advisor's practice and determine whether to confer the fiduciary designation."
(On Wall Street)
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White House Puts Its Best Obamacare Minds onto 401(k) Cleanup Project
"A five-page memo sent on Jan. 13 ... clearly endorses the Department of Labor's proposed fiduciary rule ... It could affect attempts at 401(k) reform that have been simmering in Washington all the way back to the days of Enron. The White House's message to advisors -- RIAs and broker-dealers alike -- is that their days of charging gratuitous fees and steep commissions in 401(k) plans and individual retirement accounts will no longer be swept under the Oval Office rug."
(RIABiz)
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Wall Street Gears Up as White House Pushes Retirement Fund Rules
"On Jan. 23, five association heads -- among them two former governors and an ex-congressman -- gathered to tell presidential advisers Valerie Jarrett and Jeffrey Zients that the rules would throw the retirement system into chaos and harm savers with small balances, according to attendees and people briefed on the meeting. The executives pledged to work with the administration and address its concerns that retirement savers are losing billions of dollars through high fees and questionable sales practices[.]"
(Bloomberg)
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Should You Make Aftertax Contributions to Your 401(k)?
"[A]ftertax 401(k) contributions will tend to only make sense for certain investors, and even they will want to take advantage of other tax-sheltered vehicles before funding their 401(k)s with aftertax dollars.... [N]ot every plan allows for aftertax contributions, so that's the first hurdle.... [T]hings can get complicated for investors who don't roll over their entire 401(k) balances[.]"
(Morningstar)
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When Does the Roth IRA 5-Year Clock Begin?
"For anyone who did a Roth IRA conversion in 2010 -- and there were a lot of you because of the 'deal,' the two-year spread for the taxes due -- you have now fulfilled the 5-year waiting period for taking penalty-free distributions from your 2010 Roth conversion. You have also passed one test for taking a qualified distribution, the other being attainment of age 59-1/2, death, disability, or a distribution for a first-time home purchase. A qualified distribution means there is no tax or penalty on any funds withdrawn from your Roth IRA -- ever -- for the rest of your life."
(Slott Report)
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The Importance of Supplemental Retirement Savings Plans for City and County Employees
"The most frequently offered plan is a 457 plan.... Workers covered by less generous primary pensions are more likely to contribute to voluntary supplemental retirement plans. City or county governments that give matching contributions, have multiple plans, and allow online enrollment also have higher participation rates in supplemental plans."
(Center for State & Local Government Excellence)
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[Opinion]
2015: The Year of Retirement Savings for All Workers?
"Hopefully, this new Congress will present fresh proposals to close the access gap -- perhaps by offering such generous tax credits and strong safe harbor protection from litigation that would encourage many more employers to offer plans voluntarily. What is clear is that absent some form of payroll deduction, most workers are highly unlikely to start saving enough to make a positive difference in retirement readiness.... The need is real, and this Congress should act on it."
(Putnam Investments)
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Benefits in General; Executive Compensation
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BLS Employment Cost Index, December 2014
"Compensation costs for civilian workers increased 0.6 percent, seasonally adjusted, for the 3-month period ending December 2014, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported [on January 30]. Wages and salaries (which make up about 70 percent of compensation costs) increased 0.5 percent, and benefits (which make up the remaining 30 percent of compensation) increased 0.6 percent."
(U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics [BLS])
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The 2015 Aggregate Share-Based Compensation Report (PDF)
"This report covers the three-year period from 2011 to 2013, and includes the following: [1] Company-wide annual grant rates, measured based on annual share usage and fair value transfer (FVT) ... [2] Overhang, measured based on share dilution as well as the fair value of outstanding grants; [3] Frequency and prevalence of long-term incentive plan share requests; [4] Allocation of long-term incentive pools to the CEO and other proxy officers; ... [5] Prevalence of employee stock purchase plans (ESPPs)."
(Frederic W. Cook & Co., Inc.)
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Thinking Like an Activist: The Benefits of Looking at Executive Comp Programs Through a Critical Lens
"[L]ooking at your executive compensation programs from the perspective of an activist investor can focus compensation committees on three critical areas: [1] Performance of the company relative to competitors for business and shareholder capital; [2] Executive compensation relative to peers, compared to performance relative to peers; [3] Stretch in incentive plan target setting and rigor in the evaluation of performance.... Understanding how the company is positioned in these three areas can provide an early warning of potential activist interest, or comfort that activists are not likely to see the company as an ideal target."
(Meridian Compensation Partners, LLC)
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Press Releases
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David Rhett Baker, J.D., Editor and Publisher
Holly Horton, Business Manager
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