Topic: COVID-19

This article provides practical guidance regarding how plan sponsors and fiduciaries ‎should address delays in remitting participant salary deferral contributions and plan ‎loan payments to their defined contribution plans resulting from the coronavirus (also ‎known as ‎COVID-19).‎

In addition to the relief detailed in our recent article on EBSA Disaster Relief Notice 2020-01, the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) in Notice 2020-01 extended a number deadlines for furnishing required notices or disclosures to plan participants, beneficiaries, and other persons.

On April 28, 2020 the Employee Benefits Security Administration, U.S. Department of ‎Labor, Internal Revenue Service, and Treasury Department published joint guidance ‎extending certain important deadlines that are otherwise applicable to employee ‎benefit plans.‎

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the IRS has automatically extended the deadline for ‎certain ‎retirement and welfare plans to file Form 5500. IRS Notice 2020-23 provides that tax ‎returns, including Forms 5500, that are required to be filed on or after April 1, 2020 and before ‎July 14, 2020 are automatically extended to July 15, 2020. ‎

Public companies and their boards can look to the recently released guidance of ISS and Glass ‎Lewis when considering best therapies to address corporate governance and broader ‎environmental, social and governance issues. The prominent proxy advisors address, among ‎other things, issues affecting annual general meetings, board composition, and executive ‎compensation. This post highlights the executive compensation considerations.‎

As we noted in our March 13, 2020 blog post, the Internal Revenue Service advised in IRS Notice 2020-15 that a high-deductible health plan (HDHP) is permitted to pay for COVID-19-related testing and treatment, without jeopardizing its status as an HDHP.

On March 27, 2020, President Trump signed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act or the “CARES Act”, into law.  We discussed the employee benefit plan provisions included in the CARES Act in our Quick Study published last week, which can be found here.  For sponsors of defined contribution plans, these provisions include: coronavirus-related distributions, which are a new form of distribution, relaxed loan provisions, and suspension of 2020 required minimum distributions (a brief summary of these provisions is provided in the second part of this blog post).