Compliance May 5, 2006

IRS Provides Help to Ensure Plan Qualification

May 5, 2006 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - Before submitting a determination letter application to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), plan sponsors can access forms and documents used by Employee Plans Specialists during their review of retirement plans to help ensure qualification.
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Via the IRS Web site sponsors can obtain Employee Plans Alert Guidelines, Explanations, and Plan Deficiency Paragraphs.   The Alert Guidelines are worksheets used to see if provisions of a retirement plan are in compliance with applicable law. The worksheets are broken down by subject matter such as vesting, coverage, contribution and benefit limits, and plan distributions.   Not all worksheets will apply to all plans.

Each worksheet has an accompanying Explanation which provide citations to and guidelines for the applicable law.

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Plan Deficiency Paragraphs are checklists with pre-approved wording that will satisfy IRS Code requirements.   Use of the approved language will help ensure plan qualification.

The IRS forms and documents can be accessed  here .

Benefits May 4, 2006

Carnival Cruise Line to Settle Overtime Lawsuit

May 4, 2006 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - Carnival Cruise Lines will pay $6.25 million to thousands of current and former employees that sued the company for allegedly not paying enough overtime, according to the plaintiffs' lawyer.
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According to the Associated Press, the settlement – if approved by US District Court Judge Marcia Cooke – would force the cruise liner to cough up payouts of between $100 and $150 for the nine plaintiffs leading the suit, and various amounts to as many as 39,500 people who worked on the ship starting November 2001, the newswire reported.

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Carnival has not admitted any fault in the settlement, but will setup the arbitration process to pay the disputes, the attorney representing the plaintiffs said, according to the AP.

Crew members working for the cruise line are often required to work more than 70-hour work weeks, and the workers filing the suit said Carnival failed to pay them for working the additional hours. Many cruise lines are not governed by the wage laws required by the US because they operate offshore under foreign banners, the AP reported.

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