Employee Benefits & ERISA
We know employee benefits and ERISA (Employee Retirement Income Security Act) vocabulary and can help you understand it. We have 35 years’ experience working with mainly large employers on their employee benefits and ERISA plans and can find your answers and alternatives efficiently in our highly-specialized digital legal research tools.
Our employee benefits practice includes:
Advice and Guidance
- Advice about and corrections for plan problems (self-correction and IRS formal correction through the Voluntary Correction Procedure);
- Guidance through IRS and DOL (US Department of Labor) audit;
- Responding to IRS proposed Affordable Care Act employer shared responsibility penalties;
- Retiree medical benefit advice;
- HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) and ADA (Americans with Disabilities) advice related to employee benefit plans.
Executive and Employee Retention Plans and Reviews
- Nonqualified deferred compensation plans (top-hat elective deferrals and SERPs);
- Plans operating as ERISA payroll practices, such as bonus plans and paid time off policies;
- COVID-19 employee benefits rules, including plan design and amendments.
Plan Development and Compliance
- 401(k), cash balance, pension, health, and severance plans (compliance reviews, mapping onto new documents, and amendments);
- Designs and drafts of new and existing plan documents and participant communications about plan amendments and policies;
- Reviews of other employee benefits documents, such as insurance policies and service agreements provided to employers.
We have a tax-qualified plan that is pre-approved by the IRS. The plan can be adopted by an employer establishing or updating a 401(k), a profit sharing plan or a money purchase plan. The adopting employer can rely on the IRS opinion letter issued to our law firm without having to apply to the IRS for their own determination letter about the plan’s tax qualification under the Internal Revenue Code.