Insights

On January 15, 2025, the IRS issued important guidance (Revenue Ruling 2025-4) on the federal income and employment tax treatment of contributions and benefits paid under state-paid family and medical leave (PFML) (a.k.a. disability insurance and/or paid family leave, collectively “PFML”) programs, as well as the related tax reporting requirements. The revenue ruling addresses tax treatment of state-based PFML programs; however, it does not address the federal tax treatment for fully insured or

Gain insights on implementing a hybrid work model, which has been found to mitigate drawbacks of working in office while preserving remote work advantages.

Explore the latest trends in HR, technology and artificial intelligence in this edition of Echo.

Keep your employee handbook up to date, compliant and effective in supporting both organizational objectives and employee needs

Join the Benefits Compliance team as they review state insurance laws, extraterritorial state mandates, state-specific benefit requirements, and more.

This will depend on whether the FSA participant has a balance at the end of the plan year. As background, an FSA grace period is a designated period after the end of the plan year during which participants can incur services and be reimbursed with funds remaining from the prior plan year election. The grace period cannot be longer than 2-1/2 months, but it can be shorter. For FSA plans with a grace period, an employee who has an undistributed cash balance in the FSA plan on the last day of the

On January 10, 2025, the DOL published a final rule adjusting civil monetary penalties under ERISA. The annual adjustments relate to a wide range of compliance issues and are based on the percentage increase in the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) from October of the preceding year. The DOL last adjusted certain penalties under ERISA in January of 2024. Highlights of the new penalties that may be levied against sponsors of ERISA-covered plans include: Failure to file Form 5

On January 6, 2025, HHS published proposed regulations relating to HIPAA’s Security Rule requiring numerous additional policies and procedures, imposing substantial ongoing maintenance efforts, and addressing common compliance shortfalls identified by HHS in several recent enforcement investigations. According to the proposed rules, HHS wanted to address the significant technology changes and developments since the Security Rule was published and updated (last revised in 2013), including the in

On December 4, 2024, a federal court in the Eastern District of Texas issued a ruling vacating the final rules related to the notice requirement on hospital and fixed indemnity insurance that would have been required for group coverage plan years beginning on or after January 1, 2025. As reported in the April 9, 2024, edition of Compliance Corner, under the final rules, a fixed indemnity coverage notice was required to be included in at least 14-point font on the first page of any marketin