The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s failure thus far to issue clear guidance on permissible wellness incentives threatens to undermine employers’ development of wellness programs at a time when their importance is growing, business groups warned the EEOC at a…
Employers must make accommodations to allow employees with disabilities to participate in their wellness programs, the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission said in a recently released informal discussion letter. The letter was written in response to an employer’s question about…
Health reimbursement arrangements that are not integrated with group health coverage will violate health reform’s prohibition on annual benefit limits, the federal government recently clarified. HRAs that are integrated with individual policies will be seen as “nonintegrated,” thereby violating the…
Employer sponsors of health plans must count members in retiree-only plans and COBRA-eligible plans for purposes of paying into health reform’s Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute. Furthermore, employees covered under two or more “specified” policies can be counted (and taxed) more…
Lawmakers on Capitol Hill have put transit parity — that is, the equalization of mass transit and qualified parking benefits under tax Code Section 132 — back in play, after watching it fail earlier in the session. The legislation would…
There is some persistent confusion over what the implementation of the health reform law means for health flexible spending accounts and health savings accounts. The short answer is that with one exception, employers and plan administrators must follow different steps…
Employers may not have to adjust their qualified transportation fringe benefit programs after all — at least not just yet. A legislative provision that would have affected QTFBs by boosting the mass transit exclusion to the same level as that…
Employers that offer qualified transportation benefits should be aware that they may soon need to adjust their plans. Lawmakers on Capitol Hill are setting the stage for the possible passage of a two-year federal highway funding law that could include…
The rules on how expenditures for over-the-counter drugs are reimbursed and governing health flexible spending account balances still unused at the end of the year could change if a bill the House passed on June 7 is enacted. In a…
If this bill becomes law, there will be higher dollar limits for eligible services for which employees can claim the dependent care tax credit. Rep. Steve Israel, D-N.Y., introduced the Middle Class Dependent Care Fairness Act of 2012 (H.R. 5886)…