You may recall that earlier this year the IRS launched an initiative to pursue 125,000 “high-income, high-wealth” taxpayers who have not filed taxes since 2017. These were cases where the IRS received third party information...more
April 2024 On April 4, 2024, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (“CISA”) published a 447-page Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (“Proposed Rules”) in accordance with the...more
Michigan Attorney General (AG) Dana Nessel filed a lawsuit seeking injunctive relief and dissolution of several limited liability companies owned by John and Michele Church. The Churches’ companies have allegedly violated the...more
Does your business have a framework to ensure safe, secure, and trustworthy artificial intelligence use by employees? Although federal law does not require businesses to have an AI framework, on July 21, 2023, seven leading...more
On July 21, 2023, the White House announced that seven leading A.I. organizations (Amazon, Anthropic, Google, Inflection, Meta, Microsoft, and OpenAI) agreed on and committed to immediately implementing voluntary safeguards...more
California is taking applications for its new voluntary compliance program for unclaimed property holders. Our Unclaimed Property Team sheds light on the program’s knowns and unknowns....more
At long last, California is on the verge of creating its own voluntary compliance program for unclaimed property holders. Our Unclaimed Property Team investigates how the state plans on implementing the system and cautions...more
The SECURE 2.0 Act of 2022 (the Act) contains several provisions that liberalize the rules for fixing particular retirement plan administrative mistakes that happen occasionally. The IRS has a comprehensive program for...more
The California State Legislature has passed legislation giving the Controller the green light to establish a California Voluntary Compliance Program (VCP) for holders of unclaimed property. The bill, A.B. 2280,...more
IRS Employee Plans has just announced a pilot program for pre-examination compliance checks of qualified retirement plans, beginning this month. If your plan is targeted, you will receive a letter from the IRS notifying you...more
Recently, a client came to us seeking advice on how to handle a large volume of uncashed distribution checks the client issued to its members over the past decade. Although not widely known, New York maintains an entire...more
A few months back, I was working with a 401(k) plan sponsor on a big Voluntary Compliance Program (VCP) issue. The issue was simple, the latest plan restatement (since 2019) improperly included bonuses to the definition of...more
First, there was the call for an Investment Policy Statement (IPS). Then advisors were touting the need for an Education Policy Statement (EPS). What next? ...more
Many years ago, I was contacted by a bank that had an issue. For 20 years, they didn’t include bonuses as part of their plan’s compensation, even though it was supposed to be included. I told them that the only option was an...more
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Voluntary Compliance Program (VCP) is one of the best methods for retirement plan sponsors to come clean and cost-effectively fix their plan errors, rather than getting hammered with...more
In the past 35 years, it changed on who had to take out a required minimum distribution (RMD) from a qualified retirement plan. Thankfully, it hasn’t changed since 1997. So a person who is a 5% owner has to take out an RMD...more
Great 401(k) Participant Features That Can Land You In Plan Sponsor Hot Water. It can get you in a bad spot. A 401(k) plan is one of the great employee benefits. Within a 401(k) Plan, some options are truly beneficial to...more
As a plan sponsor being investigated by an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) agent, there is one thing you might not be aware of. The IRS agent is there to ensure there has been voluntary compliance by you to the provisions of...more
One of the biggest strikes against multiple employer plans (MEPs) may go the way of bellbottoms and Betamax. The Internal Revenue Service is proposing an exception to the one bad apple rule, which means that the action of...more
The last two times I was in Las Vegas, I didn’t gamble a penny. I didn’t gamble because I hate to lose. Yet I see so many plan sponsors and plan providers gamble by not correcting a glaring compliance issue and play that...more
Washington employers are likely aware of Washington Paid Family & Medical Leave Act ("PFMLA") and the recently passed amendments, but they may have some lingering questions. This post seeks to answer those questions to ensure...more
One of my biggest tasks as an ERISA attorney is helping plan sponsors out with voluntary compliance and self-correction programs. Many of these problems that have to be fixed are as a result of the plan document saying one...more
On October 31, 2018, the Securities and Exchange Commission (the “SEC”) adopted new property disclosure requirements for mining company registrants. The new rules, codified in Subpart 1300 of Regulation S-K, aim to replace...more
With May here, plan sponsors and plan provider may not be aware of an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) deadline that isn’t that far off. All organizations that sponsor 403(b) retirement plans must restate their plan documents...more
In February 2019, the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (“Development Ministry”) introduced a draft law (the “Draft Law”) that seeks to mandate human rights due diligence for German companies...more