by Lyn Domenick
The IRS has announced the 2025 cost of living adjustments to qualified plan limits. Below are the highlights, and our full historical chart can be found here for easy reference. Read more
by Becky Achten
New guidance from the Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) affirms that both sides—retirement plans and welfare plans—must take steps to secure participant data from cybercrime.
In 2021 the Department of Labor (DOL) introduced new guidance on best practices for maintaining cybersecurity, which included tips to participants who check their retirement accounts online. From this, many plan sponsors and service providers concluded that the guidance was only applicable to retirement benefits (such as 401(k), profit sharing, and pension plans). Read more
Congratulations! You made it to summer, that wonderful time of year when things at work (hopefully) slow down a bit and you’re able to take some well-deserved time off. Though before you Go-Go(‘s) (do you see what I did there?), be sure your July employee benefits compliance deadlines are covered.
July 29 – Summary of Material Modifications (SMM) – Were any of your organization’s plans materially amended last year? If so, you may be required to furnish an SMM to participants (or a revised summary plan description). Those SMMs must be provided no later than 210 days after the end of the plan year in which the change was adopted. So, for a 2023 change, the SMM deadline would fall on July 29 (you get an extra day this year because 210 days falls on July 28, a weekend). Read more
by Lyn Domenick
As the late, great B.B. King would sing, never make your move too soon. That’s often a smart approach in life. But when it comes to employee benefits communications, that might not be the right advice. The recent legislation known as SECURE 2.0 has a delayed deadline for retirement plan amendments. Generally, for a calendar year retirement plan, the SECURE 2.0 amendment deadline is December 31, 2026; collectively bargained plans have until December 31, 2028, and governmental plans have until December 31, 2029. However, many of the relevant SECURE 2.0 provisions may already be in effect now—or will be very soon—in your plan. What are the plan sponsor’s obligations regarding communicating the SECURE 2.0 changes to employees?
In general, a plan sponsor must either update its Summary Plan Description (SPD) or issue a Summary of Material Modifications (SMM) to employees by no later than 210 days following the end of the plan year in which a retirement plan change is adopted. For a calendar year plan, that is typically July 29th following the plan year of the change (July 28th this year due to leap year). For example, if you made any plan amendments in 2023, you should issue an updated SPD or SMM by July 28, 2024. Read more
by Brenda Berg
“Missing participants” have long been a thorn in the side of plan sponsors and administrators, as they are owed a retirement benefit, but are unable to be found or unresponsive to plan communications. As a partial solution, Congress directed the DOL in the SECURE 2.0 Act of 2022 to create a “Retirement Savings Lost and Found”—an online searchable database that would connect missing participants with their retirement benefits—by December 29, 2024. The DOL had contemplated populating the database with information from Form 8955-SSA, which plans already submit to the IRS. However, the IRS has refused to provide the information to the DOL, citing privacy concerns regarding confidential tax information. This has caused the DOL to look to sponsors of ERISA plans to voluntarily provide participant information to populate the database. While this may be a good idea in principle, it creates many obstacles. Read more
by Becky Achten
“Georgia” on your mind? As we look towards the upcoming Masters golf tournament weekend, our minds turn to the condition of the greens (exquisite), the players tee off order (does afternoon help or hinder Tiger on an expected rainy day?), and who will make that amazing chip shot out of the bunker to save par. It may not get quite the level of TV viewership of other sporting events, but benefit plan administration is a lot like golf: a series of pars, birdies and bogies, and—oh my, not a double bogie!
If you’re hitting par with your benefit plans, they’re operating smoothly, participants are happy with the offerings, and you’re in compliance with the most obvious regulations. All is good, but you probably won’t earn a green jacket. Read more
by Lyn Domenick
The IRS has announced the 2024 cost of living adjustments to qualified plan limits. Below are the highlights, and our full historical chart can be found here for easy reference. Read more
by Lyn Domenick
Many retirement plan errors are inadvertent and involve small dollar amounts. However, the work involved in correcting such errors can be time consuming and burdensome. Fortunately, SECURE 2.0 provides that for certain overpayment errors a responsible plan fiduciary can now decide not to seek repayment. While plan fiduciaries are entitled to seek recoupment of overpayments, subject to some limitations, many plan sponsors will welcome this guidance since it allows them to forego seeking recoupment of overpayment errors.
For example, if a 401(k) plan incorrectly included PTO payouts upon termination in eligible compensation, and thus, applied plan contributions to such ineligible portion, the affected participants would probably not notice and in fact might not reasonably be expected to know whether or not the PTO payout should have been included in eligible compensation in their final paycheck. The dollar amounts of the overpayments would in many cases be small and also would include the participants’ own deferrals. In such a case, the plan fiduciary might reasonably choose to not seek recoupment, while correcting the payroll error going forward. Read more
by Lyn Domenick
If you remember that title song then you might remember a time before RMDs. Required minimum distributions (RMDs) have been a fixture of retirement plan operations ever since passage of the Tax Reform Act of 1986. One of the provisions in that law was the implementation of the RMD age starting with age 70-1/2; this partially offset lost revenue from the tax cuts in the bill. Many years later SECURE 1.0 increased the RMD age to 72 effective January 1, 2020. SECURE 2.0 increased the RMD age yet again and enacted other RMD-related changes that impact plan operations as described below. Read more
By Kevin Selzer
We have now had a couple of months to review and digest SECURE 2.0 (and its roughly 90 provisions impacting retirement plans). If plan sponsors haven’t done so already, it is time to roll up their sleeves and put a triage list together on these law changes. Below are some suggestions on where to start: Read more