Group health plans and tax-favored accounts—including health savings accounts (HSAs), health flexible spending arrangements (health FSAs), and health reimbursement arrangements (HRAs)— are subject to numerous nondiscrimination provisions under federal law. As a result, employers that wish to adopt arrangements which exclude certain classes of employees from group health plan coverage or offer different benefits or…
Certain Employers Must Submit Report The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) has pushed back the deadline for required entities to submit their 2017 EEO-1 report to June 1, 2018. Previously, the deadline was March 31, 2018. As a reminder, private employers with 100 or more employees and federal government contractors or first-tier subcontractors with…
Four-fifths of non-government plans that have automatic enrollment also offer automatic contribution escalation (80%). After rising sharply from 2015 to 2016, the prevalence of automatic contribution escalation among non-government plans has remained at about seven in ten for the past two years. The number of plans with automatic contribution escalation that use an opt-out approach…
On April 9, 2018, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued final regulations and related guidance on Affordable Care Act (ACA) provisions including Essential Health Benefits (EHBs), out-of-pocket (OOP) maximums, and Marketplace updates and reforms. These regulations, generally effective for plans and plan years beginning on and after Jan. 1, 2019, largely mirror…
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) has re-established $6,900 as the 2018 health savings account (HSA) contribution limit for individuals with family coverage under a high deductible health plan (HDHP). This limit was previously announced as $6,900 in May 2017, but was revised to $6,850 in March 2018 due to an inflation adjustment provision in the…
At colleges across the country, the Class of 2018 is graduating. Thinking of staffing up your business by hiring a new college graduate? Learn some tips on how to prepare these hires for your workplace by watching the video below.
A previously extended transitional policy that permits health insurance issuers to continue group coverage that would otherwise be terminated or cancelled due to the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has been further extended to policy years beginning on or before October 1, 2019, provided that all policies end by December 31, 2019. Health insurance issuers that…
While the federal Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) requires for-profit employers to pay “employees” for their work, interns and students may not be employees under the FLSA. The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) and many courts use the “primary beneficiary” test to determine whether an intern or student is, in fact, an employee under the…
The U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) has released guidance clarifying federal law on tip pooling. The guidance was issued in response to a federal law that amended the federal Fair Labor Standards Act’s (FLSA) tip pooling rules. The DOL guidance states that: Employers are prohibited from keeping tips received by their employees, regardless of whether…
The Internal Revenue Service has released FAQs on the Paid Family and Medical Leave Tax Credit, which certain employers can soon claim based on wages paid to employees on family and medical leave. The tax credit is effective for tax years 2018 and 2019. Among other questions, the FAQs answer: Which employers can claim the…
