Industry & Regulatory News

The House of Representatives has passed by a vote of 219-212 the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 to provide additional relief to address the continued impact of COVID-19. Noteworthy retirement and health provisions include the following.

The Department of Labor’s (DOL) Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) has released Disaster Relief Notice 2021-01 providing guidance on the duration of COVID-19-related relief previously provided by Disaster Relief Notice 2020-01 and the Notice of Extension of Certain Timeframes for Employee Benefit Plans, Participants, and Beneficiaries Affected by the COVID-19 Outbreak (Joint Notice) issued in 2020 by the DOL, Treasury Department, and the IRS (collectively the "Notices").

The IRS has made available a 2022 tax year draft Form W-4P, Withholding Certificate for Periodic Pension or Annuity Payments, and indicates that the form will be split into two forms. Form W-4P will continue to be used, but only to withhold federal income tax from periodic retirement plan and IRA payments. Periodic payments are installment payments at regular intervals generally over a period of more than one year.

The IRS has issued Notice 2021-15, providing additional guidance and flexibility to employee benefit plans offering health FSA and dependent care arrangements. Because of COVID-19, employees participating in these programs are more likely to have unused amounts in these accounts as a result of changes in anticipated expenses during the pandemic. To qualify as a cafeteria plan under IRC Section 125, funds remaining at the end of the plan year generally cannot be carried over to future plan years, and restrictions apply when modifying elections after the start of the plan year.

The IRS has announced in an Employee Plans News bulletin that processing requests for an extension of time to file 2019 Forms 5500 series returns were delayed in 2020, resulting in delayed mailing of Notice CP 216F.

When employers start a retirement plan, they may ask who should be eligible to participate, what kind of contributions should be made, and how and when can employees access their account balances? Unfortunately, many employers don’t consider how to handle missing participants’ account balances—or more importantly—how to prevent losing track of participants in the first place.

At the end of 2019, the Internal Revenue Code (IRC) was amended to create a mandatory 60-day postponement for certain federal tax-related deadlines in the event of a disaster. This new provision was designed to ensure that affected taxpayers would have guaranteed relief while recovering from a natural disaster or other emergency. But this measure didn’t seem to affect how the IRS had already been responding to such events. In fact, the new law created some ambiguity.

Legislation proposed by the House Ways and Means Committee to provide COVID-19 pandemic relief and economic stimulus includes several items that would affect retirement and health benefits. Among them are the following.

On January 28, 2021, the IRS posted updated Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) on COVID-19-related employer tax credits for paid leave that is provided by certain small- and mid-size businesses. These tax credits were initially created by the Family First Coronavirus Response Act that was signed into law in March 2020.

The Department of Labor (DOL) Wage and Hour Division has proposed a delay of the effective date for final regulations on independent contractor status, regulations that were due to become effective March 8, 2021. The DOL is seeking to delay the effective date to May 7, 2021. Comments on the request to delay the effective date must be received by February 24, 2021.