As we have reported in prior Benefit Beats, the various government agencies responsible for plan compliance, whether retirement or welfare benefit, are taking the approach that they want to provide tools to encourage and facilitate compliance; see these prior Benefit Beat articles:
The Department of Labor has made available a self-compliance tool specifically for compliance with the Affordable Care Act.
The tool is divided into the following subjects:
- Determining grandfather status
- Dependent coverage of children to age 26
- Rescission provisions
- Prohibitions on lifetime limits and restrictions on annual limits
- Preexisting condition exclusion for individuals under 19
- Summary of benefits and coverage (SBC) and uniform glossary
- Patient protection provisions
- Preventive services provisions
- Internal claims and appeals and external review
While this tool may not be inclusive, it certainly provides a good guideline to employers to ensure that their plans are compliant with the myriad of new rules.
In addition, the IRS has offered several fix-it guides to facilitate correcting retirement plan errors, as follows:
The important message here is that compliance is very important. Tools are available and they must be used to avoid the risk of significant penalty.
The information contained in this Benefit Beat is not intended to be legal, accounting, or other professional advice, nor are these comments directed to specific situations.
As required by U.S. Treasury rules, we inform you that, unless expressly stated otherwise, any U.S. federal tax advice contained in this Benefit Beat is not intended or written to be used, and cannot be used, by any person for the purpose of avoiding any penalties that may be imposed by the Internal Revenue Service.