ERISA News

The IRS has issued a news release announcing the postponement of certain tax-related deadlines for Kentucky victims of severe storms, flooding, and tornadoes. The tax relief postpones various tax filing and payment deadlines that occurred starting December 10. The areas included in the relief are Caldwell, Fulton, Graves, Hopkins, Marshall, Muhlenberg, Taylor, and Warren counties.

The IRS has provided draft Instructions for Form 8915-F, Qualified Disaster Retirement Plan Distributions and Repayments.

On November 19, 2021, the U.S. House of Representatives passed H.R. 5376, the Build Back Better Act ("BBB Act" or "the Act"). Following quickly on the heels of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, the BBB Act contains several retirement and benefits provisions that may affect financial organizations, service providers, and consumers. This bill has gone through numerous revisions as it made its journey to the House floor for a vote. It will now go to the Senate, which will likely make further revisions. So the Act’s final version—if passed by both the House and Senate—may be different from the current version.

On November 22, 2021, the Department of the Treasury released a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPR) entitled, "Information Reporting of Health Insurance Coverage and Other Issues Under Internal Revenue Code Sections (IRC Secs.) 5000A, 6055, and 6056," that extend the applicable deadlines to furnish statements, clarify that certain Medicaid coverage is not minimum essential coverage, and provide a deadline to submit comments relating to 2016 proposed rules affecting reporting. Comments related to the NPR are due 60 days following the publication of the NPR in the federal register. The NPR provides as follows.

The House of Representatives passed the $1.9 trillion Build Back Better bill in a 220-213 near party line vote. The House-passed version of the bill contains several IRA provisions, including

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (the Act), signed by President Biden on November 15, 2021, includes extensions to the single employer pension funding relief originally provided in the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 (ARPA). Other provisions include modifications to the mandatory 60-day postponement period, which grants relief to taxpayers for certain tax-related acts due to federally declared disasters and new reporting requirements for transactions involving digital assets. The effective dates vary—pension funding relief provisions apply to plan years beginning after December 31, 2021; the disaster relief changes are effective for federally declared disasters that occur after November 15, 2021; and the new reporting requirements for digital assets apply to information reports required to be filed after December 31, 2023.

The IRS has issued Revenue Procedure (Rev. Proc.) 2021-45, which contains cost-of-living adjustments for taxable years beginning in 2022 for over 60 tax provisions, including the following health and welfare benefits.

Leadership from the House Committee on Education and Labor and its Subcommittee on Health, Employment, Labor and Pensions have introduced the Retirement Improvement and Savings Enhancement (RISE) Act to expand worker access to a secure retirement.

The much-anticipated Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (the Act) has passed the House of Representatives months after its approval in the Senate. The legislation contains the following noteworthy provisions.

The IRS has issued a fourth draft of the 2022 Form W-4P, Withholding Certificate for Periodic Pension or Annuity Payments. In it, the IRS indicates that while final versions of the redesigned Form W-4P and Form W-4R will be released for 2022, based on comments received on prior drafts from stakeholders, the IRS will postpone requirements to begin using the redesigned forms until January 1, 2023. Payors should update their system programming for these new forms but may otherwise continue to use the 2021 Form W-4P.