ERISA News

The IRS has issued its initial 2021-2022 Priority Guidance Plan, in which it describes guidance projects in the current fiscal year. Many items in the plan have appeared in prior years’ Priority Guidance Plans.

The IRS has issued a news release announcing the postponement of certain tax-related deadlines for victims of Hurricane Ida in New York. The tax relief postpones various tax filing deadlines that began September 1, 2021. Affected individuals and households who reside or have a business in Bronx, Kings, New York, Queens, Richmond, and Westchester counties, as well as taxpayers with records located in the covered area that are needed to meet covered deadlines qualify for relief. The IRS has indicated similar guidance will be released for Bergen, Gloucester, Hunterdon, Middlesex, Passaic, and Somerset counties in New Jersey. This relief will be automatically granted to taxpayers in Ida-affected locations in other parts of these states subsequently designated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA).

The House Ways and Means Committee has released draft legislative text as part of what is currently planned to be a $3.5 trillion tax and spending package. The proposal would require employers without an employer-sponsored retirement plan to automatically enroll their employees in an automatic IRA plan or other retirement arrangement at a rate of at least 6 percent and increasing annually to 10 percent of compensation beginning in 2023. Representative Richard Neal (D-MA) previously proposed such legislation under the Automatic Retirement Plan Act of 2017. The current proposal exempts employers with 5 or fewer employees earning at least $5,000, or those that have been in business for less than 2 years from these requirements. The legislation includes enhancements to credits for small employers to offset plan costs and imposes an excise tax of $10 per participant per day to employers that fail to provide an automatic arrangement.

The IRS has released Revenue Procedure 2021-37, providing procedures for the issuance of opinion letters and the timing requirements of remedial amendment periods for Cycle 2 approvals of 403(b) plans. The guidance aligns the 403(b) pre-approval process with the 401(a) process in several ways.

The IRS has issued news releases IR-2021-175 and LA-2021-04 announcing the postponement of certain tax-related deadlines for Hurricane Ida victims in Louisiana. The tax relief postpones various tax filing deadlines that began August 26, 2021. Affected individuals and households who reside or have a business anywhere in the state of Louisiana, as well as taxpayers with records located in the covered area that are needed to meet covered deadlines qualify for relief. This relief will be automatically granted to taxpayers in Ida-impacted locations in neighboring states designated by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) as qualifying for individual or public assistance.

The IRS has issued a news release announcing the postponement of certain tax-related deadlines for California wildfire victims. The tax relief postpones various tax filing and payment deadlines that began on July 14, 2021. Affected individuals and households that reside or have a business in Lassen, Nevada, Placer, and Plumas counties, as well as taxpayers with records located in the covered area that are needed to meet covered deadlines qualify for relief.

The IRS has issued a news release announcing the postponement of certain tax-related deadlines for Tennessee victims of severe storms and flooding. The tax relief postpones various tax filing and payment deadlines that began on August 21, 2021. Affected individuals and households that reside or have a business in Dickson, Hickman, Houston, and Humphreys counties, as well as taxpayers with records located in the covered area that are needed to meet covered deadlines qualify for relief.

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has released a report titled “401(K) Retirement Plans – Many Participants Do Not Understand Fee Information, but DOL Could Take Additional Steps to Help Them”. The GAO analyzed survey responses from 1,004 401(k) plan participants and found that nearly 40 percent of respondents do not fully understand the fee information found in fee disclosures required to be provided to participants. Further, the GAO determined that 45 percent of participants cannot use the information provided in disclosures to determine the cost of their investment, and 41 percent of participants falsely believed they had no 401(k) plan fees.

Senators Bill Cassidy (R-LA) and Robert Menendez (D-NJ) have introduced legislation that would make permanent certain rules for distributions and loans from retirement plans and IRAs in connection with federally declared disasters. This legislation is intended to aid victims by providing consistent treatment of and improving response times associated with disaster relief.

The IRS has released Revenue Procedure (Rev. Proc.) 2021-30, which contains significant updates to the Employee Plans Compliance Resolution System (EPCRS). Employers use EPCRS to correct certain retirement plan qualification failures so that they can continue to maintain a tax-favored retirement plan. EPCRS consists of the Self-Correction Program (SCP), the Voluntary Correction Program (VCP), and the Audit Closing Agreement Program (Audit CAP). Rev. Proc. 2021-30 supersedes the previous EPCRS guidance (in Rev. Proc. 2019-19) and affects each of these three programs.