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The Affordable Care Act set affordability limits on group health plans. It also set significant penalties for failure to offer affordable plans. Potentially there's a huge increase coming in 2024 for employers' share of the costs.

The COVID-19 Outbreak Period has had numerous impacts upon benefit plans, extending timelines with which plans had to perform certain activities.

President Biden declared the end of the National Emergency effective May 11, 2023. Employers must plan now for the end of the Outbreak Period.

It must be the holiday season. The IRS recently finalized new regulations providing that ALEs must furnish the Forms 1095-C to employees no later than 30 days after January 31st of each year. In the past, forms were due by January 31st unless an employer asked for an extension. It's now automatic.

The IRS has now released all of the 2023 benefit limits on October 21, 2022. Earlier this year, they also released the High Deductible Health Plan (HDHP) and Health Savings Account (HSA) limits.

The IRS has now released all of the 2022 benefit limits. Earlier this year, they also released the High Deductible Health Plan (HDHP) and Health Savings Account (HSA) limits.

Employers that offer prescription drug benefits are required to provide an annual notice to all Medicare-eligible plan participants and qualified beneficiaries before October 15th of each year, the start of the Medicare open enrollment period. Most send it to all participants.

Among its many provisions, the ACA says that Applicable Large Employers must provide health coverage that is affordable to at least 95 percent of its full-time employees. In 2022, for only the second time since 2015 the affordability index fell. Employers have work to do.

In August 2021 Delta Airlines announced that starting in 2022 it was imposing a $200 per month premium surcharge for any COVID-19 unvaccinated employee. Other employers quickly began asking if this was allowable under a myriad of employee benefit laws. The answer is "yes," but...

Last year's Consolidated Appropriations Act and this year's American Rescue Plan provided employers optional flexibility for their Dependent Care FSAs. But they also created a potential tax hurdle. The IRS fixed (most all of) it.

The Consolidated Appropriations Act contains many benefit changes, all of which are optional on the part of the employer. We know this is coming long after open enrollment has ended for most plans, but employers will want to pay close attention and decide which (if any) they'd like to adopt.

Employers that offer prescription drug benefits are required to provide an annual notice to all Medicare-eligible plan participants and qualified beneficiaries before October 15th of each year, the start of the Medicare open enrollment period. Most send it to all participants.

The same IRS Notice (2020-68) that addresses Qualified Birth or Adoption Distributions (QBADs) also deals with how to handle the SECURE Act’s inclusion of long-term part-time employees and their eligibility for 401(k) plans.