Human Capital Management Blog

Each year, the IRS sets new out of pocket maximums and contribution limits for a number of tax-related benefit plans based on cost-of-living adjustments (COLAs). We'll get right to the point. The 2020 adjustments are official as of today and are as follows.

There's never a shortage of compliance concerns when offering group benefits. While Summary Plan Descriptions and Plan Documents from insurance carriers cover much of the required notices to plan participants, there are a few outlying communications that fall on the shoulders of employers. To keep in compliance, here are a few notices that should be a part of an employer’s onboarding or annual enrollment processes.

The IRS has released updated penalties for Affordable Care Act non-compliance. As has been the common practice since the first year of mandatory reporting for Applicable Large Employers (ALEs), the penalties for failure to offer coverage to “substantially all” of your full-time employees, or failure to offer coverage that was “affordable” or offered “minimum value” has increased with inflation. Here are the new penalty rates, as well as some common misconceptions about ACA penalties.

Starting on Nov 18, 2019, NYS employers will be required to grant leave to employees whom they know to be victims of domestic violence. While there are exceptions for employers who can show that the leave would place upon their business an undue hardship, employers are required to provide such employees with a “reasonable amount of time” to receive recovery care.

While changing Flex Spending Account Administrator's in the middle of your plan year is not ideal, it is certainly possible.

Simplify HR and keep my costs low—has a nice ring to it. Managing employees and their benefits can be expensive and tedious, and the problem only grows as your expand. A Professional Employer Organization (PEO) is certainly an option for employers looking to offboard HR tasks and find some possible savings on health insurance. The question—is a PEO a good fit for you? Here are a few pros and cons to consider, as well as some topics that most PEOs like to avoid discussing in their sales presentations. Joining a PEO is a big commitment, so the following tips will help you walk into the discussion with eyes wide open.

In the United States, 86% of health care costs are spent for people with chronic conditions. While High Deductible Health Plans (HDHPs) have been a popular plan offering for employers seeking reduced health care costs for employer-sponsored plans, the high up front deductibles were often a deterrent to participation from employees with chronic conditions. In HDHP's participants can receive copays before paying their full deductible for services classified as "preventative care." But for people with chronic conditions, it was almost guaranteed they would be paying their entire deductible. However, on July 17, 2019, the IRS released a notice which added a number of chronic conditions whose treatment would fall under that definition of "preventative care."

When Governor Cuomo signed the 2018 Budget Bill, one of the provisions was a prohibition against employers including any written clause in employee’s contracts or company policy requiring sexual harassment allegations to go through mandatory arbitration prior to outside courts. The only exception would be where this provision was inconsistent with federal law.