Benefits Blast

The IRS recently released Revenue Procedure 2025-19 with the 2026 inflation-adjusted amounts for health savings accounts (HSAs), high-deductible health plans (HDHPs), and excepted-benefit health reimbursement arrangements (HRAs).

In Cunningham v. Cornell University, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected efforts by plan fiduciary defendants, previously endorsed by several courts of appeals, to require plaintiffs to allege more than the mere existence of a contract with a service provider to withstand early motions to dismiss prohibited transaction claims in excessive fee lawsuits. The decision appears likely to lead to increased litigation, and plan fiduciaries should review their processes and procedures to ensure plans are only paying reasonable fees for necessary services.

Amid a recent resurgence in litigation targeting pension risk transfer (PRT) transactions, plan sponsors and fiduciaries should take extra care in selecting annuity providers to ensure compliance with fiduciary duties. Read on for a summary of recent developments and insights.   

Effective January 15, 2025, the United States Department of Labor increased its ERISA health and welfare civil penalties for noncompliance. 

Since late 2023, there has been a surge in litigation challenging the use of forfeitures in retirement plans.

Earlier this year, the Department of Labor (DOL) announced updates to the Voluntary Fiduciary Correction Program (VFCP), which are set to take effect March 17, 2025. As an alternative to the more onerous VFCP Application Process, certain common plan errors will soon be eligible for a streamlined self-correction process, known as the Self-Correction Component (SCC). In addition, the DOL amended the associated Prohibited Transaction Exemption, PTE 2002-51, to extend relief to certain corrections under the new SCC.

In the past few months, group health plans have experienced a surge of litigation challenging premium surcharges based on participants’ tobacco use.

In recent weeks, fires have devastated communities in and around Los Angeles, California. 

As 2025 begins, we wanted to highlight several important changes that will impact employer-sponsored group health plans.

The Internal Revenue Service recently published limits for 2025 in Revenue Procedure 2024-40. Below we have outlined health and welfare limits for 2025 and the changes in those limits from 2024.

The FTC recently appealed a Texas federal court’s decision from August to block the implementation of the FTC’s rule banning worker non-competes.

The IRS recently released Notice 2024-80 to announce cost-of-living adjustments to the indexed dollar limits applicable to retirement plans. Most importantly, the new IRS guidance addresses the SECURE 2.0 change to the catch-up contribution limit for participants aged 60 to 63.

On October 4, 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court agreed to resolve a three-way circuit split regarding the pleading standard for alleged prohibited-transaction claims under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, as amended (ERISA).

Institutional Shareholder Services, one of the leading proxy advisory firms, uses its Annual Global Benchmark Policy Survey to gauge investor and other stakeholder interests and market sentiment. 

There is still time to submit responses to Glass Lewis’s 2024 Policy Survey, which the proxy advisor uses to gauge investor and other stakeholder interests and market sentiment. Since Glass Lewis selects the questions, the policy survey also indicates the advisor’s areas of policy focus. In this blog post, we identify a few highlights from the Executive Compensation portion of the survey we think practitioners should be tracking.

As the Supreme Court’s 2024 term comes to a close, we want to highlight several decisions that impact employer-sponsored group health plans. Health plan sponsors will want to monitor the impact of these decisions.

Last month, the United States (U.S.) Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit partially upheld a lower court ruling in Braidwood Management, Inc. v. Becerra that invalidated the preventive care mandate under the Affordable Care Act (ACA). 

The IRS recently released Rev. Proc. 2024-25, which provides the inflation-adjusted limits related to health savings accounts (HSAs), high deductible health plans (HDHPs), and excepted benefit health reimbursement arrangements (HRAs) for the 2025 calendar year.

On April 3, 2024, the U.S. Department of Labor (Department) published its final amendment (the Final Amendment) to Prohibited Transaction Class Exemption 84-14 (the QPAM Exemption or Exemption).