Pension Protection Act Blog

Three attorneys walk into a bar after a long day at the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals. One is an ERISA attorney, one is a trial attorney, and one is a mergers & acquisition attorney. The bartender takes one look at them, and says…..
Yesterday, the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals discussed issues created […]

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Tucked away in Section 6.05 of Rev. Proc. 2008-6 is a requirement that determination letter submissions contain a highlighted or redlined copy of the plan document. It states:

6.05 Except in the case of applications involving master and prototype plans filed on Form 5307 or determination letters for volume submitter plans under section 9.02(2)(d), a […]

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Prof. Paul M. Secunda over at the Workplace Prof Blog discusses the article in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal about Wal-Mart’s health and welfare plan.
In Wal-Mart Insured Ranks Rise, reporter Ann Zimmerman states that:

“The world’s biggest retailer by sales said 690,970 employees, or 50% of its almost 1.4 million staff, signed up for company-furnished health insurance […]

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One of the reasons I write plan documents for a living is because they are so interesting. Each plan document is like writing a novel, and a good plan document reads like a good novel. The other reason I like writing plan documents for a living is that the IRS requires a plan […]

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For an employee working two jobs, can they receive qualified transportation fringe benefits from each employer? With more employers adding transit and parking benefits for their employees, and more employees working multiple jobs, this question keeps popping up.
The answer to this question is generally “yes” - an employee working two jobs can receive qualified […]

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Roy F. Harmon III of the Health Plan Law blog is reporting that a Petition for Certiorari has been filed in Administrative Committee of Wal-Mart Stores Inc. v. Shank, and has a copy of the petition for cert. posted on his website. He is also reporting that the Court has sent a letter to […]

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Another Walmart Health and Welfare reimbursement decision, this time out of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. In Administrative Committee v. Horton, No. 07-10012 (Jan. 15, 2008), the 11th Circuit reversed the district court’s decision which had granted summary judgment to the participant, and remanded the case back to the district court for further […]

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Aaron Juckett over at The One-Stop ESOP Blog posts a great reminder about items to look at when reviewing ESOP plan documents. In ESOP Planning: Plan Documents and Disclosures, Aaron discusses 8 questions to ask when reviewing the plan documents, including whether the plan documents are consistent with how the plan is being […]

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In a few weeks, on January 31st, Cycle B ends and Cycle C begins. Cycle C marks the middle of this great experiment called the EGTRRA remedial amendment cycle restatement period. Like all experiments, charts and tables come in handy. When the IRS issued Rev. Proc. 2007-44 last year, they also updated […]

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Just about every ERISA plan document, both defined contribution and defined benefit plans, contain information about Qualified Domestic Relations Orders (QDROs). This is because ERISA generally prevents the distribution, assignment, or garnishment of benefits owed to a participant unless a QDRO allows payment to an alternate payee. Normally, the alternate payee is a […]

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