Benefits July 11, 2018

House Committee Contemplates Bill That Would Reduce Employer Health Benefit Costs

Also being considered is legislation for expanding benefits of HSAs.

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The House Ways and Means Committee is considering bills that would reduce employer costs for health benefits coverage and expand benefits of health savings accounts (HSAs).

Among one of the bills considered is legislation to amend the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) to provide for a temporary moratorium on the employer mandate and to provide for a delay in the implementation of the excise tax on high cost employer-sponsored health coverage (also referred to as the Cadillac Tax).

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It would provide retroactive relief from the ACA’s employer mandate from 2015 through 2018 and delay for one additional year (until 2023) the 40% Cadillac Tax. “We encourage the committee to go even farther by fully repealing the ACA’s employer mandate and ‘Cadillac Tax,’ both of which strain employer resources and impose greater out-of-pocket costs on working families,” American Benefits Council President James A. Klein said in a statement.

In addition, The Alliance to Fight the 40| Don’t Tax My Health Care says it “continues to advocate for full repeal of the 40% “Cadillac Tax” that is set to tax employer-provided health plans. The Alliance is pleased that the Ways & Means Committee is considering legislation to further delay the 40% ‘Cadillac Tax.’ Delaying this tax for one additional year is a step in the right direction. Until we achieve a full and permanent repeal of this tax, 178 million Americans will continue to be threatened by shrinking benefits and higher out-of-pocket costs and other negative results of this onerous tax.”

The American Benefits Council says other measures under consideration by the committee would expand the availability and utility of HSAs. The Bipartisan HSA Improvement Act, introduced in March, would make a number of changes to the law governing HSAs, including provisions expanding the kinds of services that could be covered under a health plan without being subject to a deductible. For example, this bill grants employers and plans new flexibility to cover chronic disease prevention before a patient has met his or her deductible

“We applaud efforts to increase HSA contributions and expand HSA-eligible coverage for working seniors and spouses with health flexible spending accounts. Approval of these measures would be a helpful first step toward increased take-up by employees and innovation by employers,” Klein said.
Compliance July 11, 2018

Hardship Withdrawal Safe Harbor Covers Tuition, But Not Loan Repayments

Plans which permit non-safe harbor hardship distributions could theoretically approve a participant’s hardship distribution request for the repayment of student loans, but those relying on the safe harbor cannot.

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A timely new Insights publication from the law firm of Drinker, Biddle and Reath looks back at an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) letter sent earlier this year to Representative Scott Perry, R-Pennsylvania, in response to his inquiry about whether individual taxpayers can use a qualified 401(k) plan hardship withdrawal for the purpose of paying down student loan debt.

Reviewing the IRS response—formally published as Information Letter 2018-1—Karen Gelula, counsel, and Betsy Olson, associate, point out how the IRS emphasized that a hardship distribution must, among other things, be necessary to satisfy “an immediate and heavy financial need.”

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As Gelula and Olson note, the letter does not directly address the plan provisions applicable to the specific constituent about whom Perry pinged the IRS, but instead notes that under the safe harbor standards for hardship distributions in the Internal Revenue Code Section 401(k) regulations, “education expenses” can in some cases be deemed a sufficiently immediate and heavy financial need, but only if they are for the “payment of tuition, related educational fees, and room and board expenses, for up to the next 12 months of post-secondary education.”

“The IRS confirmed in the letter that because a safe harbor hardship distribution may be made only for the prospective payment of education expenses, it cannot be made for the repayment of student loans,” Gelula and Olson write. “The IRS suggested that as an alternative to taking a hardship distribution, the participant may be able to get a loan from the plan.”

The attorneys further observe that 401(k) plans which permit non-safe harbor hardship distributions as described in the Internal Revenue Code Section 401(k) regulations could theoretically approve a participant’s hardship distribution request for the repayment of student loans, “provided that the loan repayment constitutes an immediate and heavy financial need based on all the relevant facts and circumstances.”

“Among other things, this includes the participant’s representation that the need cannot be relieved from other reasonably available resources such as insurance reimbursement, liquidation of the participant’s assets, cessation of plan contributions, other currently available distributions such as employee stock ownership plan dividends and non-taxable (at the time of the loan) plan loans, or borrowing from commercial sources,” the attorneys explain.

They also remind plan fiduciaries that the hardship distribution provisions will be changing in 2019, including the removal of the requirement in the safe harbor hardship distribution standards that a participant “take all available plan loans to demonstrate financial necessity.”

“In addition, the Treasury Secretary has been directed to remove from the safe harbor hardship distribution standards the requirement that the participant’s deferral contributions to all plans maintained by the employer must be suspended for six months following the withdrawal,” the attorneys point out.

The full IRS Information Letter 2018-01 is available here.

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