Our articles this month focus on health care reform.

This month's issue covers two emerging areas of employee-benefits law. Our lead article considers the implications of a forthcoming decision in Comcast Corp. v. Behrend, a case currently pending in the Supreme Court.

On October 12, 2011, the Internal Revenue Service ("IRS") and Treasury Department released Notice 2011-85 which postpones the effective date for the interest crediting rules for hybrid retirement plans (such as cash balance plans) as well as the timing for the adoption of plan amendments reflecting those rules.

On October 21, 2010, the U.S. Department of Labor (the "DOL") issued a proposed rule addressing when a person providing investment advice with respect to an employee benefit plan is considered a fiduciary under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, as amended ("ERISA").

The Small Business Jobs Act of 2010, signed into law on September 27, 2010, includes a new Roth "in-plan" conversion option for 401(k) and 403(b) plans that permits plan participants to convert pre-tax amounts into after-tax Roth amounts in the same plan.

The U.S. Department of Labor ("DOL") recently published interim final regulations (the "Interim Final Regulations") under Section 408(b)(2) of the U.S. Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, as amended ("ERISA"), which will require certain service providers to employee pension benefit plans and entities holding "plan assets" to disclose information regarding their compensation so as to assist plan fiduciaries in assessing the reasonableness of the service provider’s contract with the p

On June 24, 2010, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit held, in "Durakovic v. Building Service 32 BJ Pension Fund", 2010 WL 2519645 (2d Cir. 2010), that Taft-Hartley funds (administered by boards of trustees consisting of an equal number of union and employer representatives) are inherently conflicted when making benefit determinations, and that this conflict needs to be considered by federal district courts when reviewing plan determinations under an arbitrary and capricious standar

In earlier client alerts (click here to access previous alerts), we reported that the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) released an interim final rule that implements the Early Retiree Reinsurance Program established by the Affordable Care Act (the "Act").

This month’s articles focus on two different, but equally important, sections of ERISA.

We wanted to remind you of the upcoming June 30, 2010 deadline for filing the Report of Foreign Bank and Financial Accounts (FBAR) (Form TDF 90-22.1) by U.S. persons that held a financial interest in a foreign financial account for calendar year 2009 if the aggregate value of all the U.S. person's foreign financial accounts exceeded $10,000 at any time during the year.

On May 17, 2010, the IRS issued Notice 2010-44 (the Notice), its first official guidance interpreting Section 45R of the Internal Revenue Code, which was added by the Affordable Care Act.

On April 27, 2010, the Internal Revenue Service (the "IRS") issued Notice 2010-38 (the "Notice"), which provides important guidance regarding the tax treatment of employer-provided health coverage to employees’ adult children.

Health care reform has arrived as have new mandates on employers and medical service providers. On Sunday night, March 21, 2010, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (H.R. 3590), which had been previously approved by the Senate on December 24, 2009 (the "Reform Act").

The Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act of 2009 ("CHIPRA"), which was enacted by President Obama last year, included a requirement that employers maintaining group health plans must notify their employees of potential opportunities for group health plan premium assistance through Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program ("CHIP") in the States in which the employees reside.

Recently, the Internal Revenue Service (the "IRS") hosted a phone forum (the "IRS Phone Forum") during which IRS representatives discussed certain of the guidance issued this fall that relate to retirement plan distributions and addressed practitioner questions.