"This document contains proposed amendments to the regulations relating to user fees for enrolled agents and enrolled retirement plan agents. This document also contains a notice of public hearing on the proposed regulations. The proposed regulations increase the renewal user fee for enrolled retirement plan agents from $67 to $140. In addition, the proposed regulations increase both the enrollment and renewal user fee for enrolled agents from $67 to $140."   MORE >>

"[These] final regulations increase the amount of the user fee for each part of the special enrollment examination for enrolled agents (EA SEE). The final regulations also remove the user fee for the special enrollment examination for enrolled retirement plan agents (ERPA SEE) because the IRS no longer offers the ERPA SEE or new enrollment as an enrolled retirement plan agent."   MORE >>

74 pages. "The Secretary is not required to determine a violation occurred or is about to occur before he subpoenas documents.... The District Court correctly held that there was no legitimate barrier to enforcing the Subpoena simply because it did not state what specific violation was being investigated ... [T]he integrity of plan recordkeeping systems is squarely within the Department's regulatory scope." [ Walsh v. Alight Solutions, LLC , No. 20-2138 (N.D. Ill. Oct. 28, 2021; on appeal to 7th Cir.)]   MORE >>

"The court disagreed with the Seventh Circuit and found that the traditional rules of contract construction should apply to CBAs unless they conflict with federal labor law.... ERISA does not speak to tardy contributions. Congress chose not to include them within ERISA Section 502(g)(2)'s gambit. The court also reasoned that there's a difference between a tardy contribution and an unpaid one." [ Plumbers & Pipefitters Loc. 625 v. Nitro Constr. Servs., Inc. , No. 20-2080 (4th Cir. Feb. 23, 2022)]   MORE >>

"Cancelled and reissued qualified plan distribution checks, particularly to decedents, should be monitored for payment in light of the [IRS's] repeated refusal to repay withholding to payor plans. If a Form 1099-R is filed reporting a distribution that was never received, employers could end up effectively paying twice the withholding amounts."   MORE >>

"[DOL] recently sent out approximately 22,000 emails to Form 5500 contacts for certain 'stop-filer' plans. Specifically, the emails targeted plans where a Form 5500 or 5500-SF was submitted in 2019 but not in 2020.... [T]he email is not a formal notification of a late submission and there is no obligation to respond to the email.... The email does not mean the applicable 2020 Form 5500 is late. Some plans were entitled to an extension to Feb. 15, 2022, due to Hurricane Ida."   MORE >>

"The SECURE Act offers protection from liability to fiduciaries that provide these disclosures in the event that the income illustrations prove to be inaccurate.... To be eligible for the relief ... the illustrations must use the IFR's assumptions and model language (or language substantially similar) in participant benefit statements."   MORE >>

"ERISA does not require a retirement plan to have an IPS, but the [DOL's] regular practice of asking to see a plan's IPS in plan audits is a clear best practice indicator.... [T]he tests applied to each evaluation focus on standard criteria in an audit. Those criteria include due diligence concerning the selection of money managers, adherence to the IPS specifications, and documentation of the monitoring activities."   MORE >>

"[U]sing plan-level aggregate values to assess individual participants' ESG investment decisions gives an incomplete picture in assessing participant preferences. While dollar allocations to ESG funds at a plan level may be small (on average, 2.7 percent in [this] sample), [this study finds] an overall ESG adoption rate of 31 percent and an average ESG allocation for ESG-investing participants of 14 percent."   MORE >>

"Most large insurance companies have defined benefit plans, but they are not the primary retirement savings vehicle for the workforce ... Automatic enrollment in the 401(k) plan is nearly universal ... Default contribution rates for automatic enrollment tend to be higher ... Insurance companies are ahead of the curve on student loan programs ... Three-quarters of insurance workers save above the match threshold."   MORE >>