One of the spending bills signed by President Trump to avert a government shutdown late last year had attached to it the Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement Act of 2019, or as it’s known by its acronym, the SECURE Act.
The SECURE Act, which passed the House on May 23, 2019, but languished in the Senate, has important implications for retirement savings.
In a series of four posts, I will provide an overview of a few of the more noteworthy features of the legislation. In this first post, I examine the creation of a new rule requiring 401(k) plans to cover long-term part-time workers. A subsequent post will discuss other changes impacting 401(k) plans, including liberalizations of the safe harbors that allow a 401(k) plan to bypass contribution nondiscrimination testing, and a provision that seeks to encourage the inclusion of annuity payments as a form of 401(k) plan distribution. Another will describe an extension of the time limit on adopting a new retirement plan, to make it effective for a tax year, and the fourth post will discuss the changes made by the Act to the required minimum distribution rules applicable to retirement plans and IRAs. Continue reading “Some Highlights from the Recently Enacted SECURE Act”
In 
New Jersey and New York are the latest states to prohibit employers from asking job applicants about their pay history and considering pay information in making employment decisions.
Effective January 1, 2020, private employers in New Jersey are prohibited from asking job applicants about their salary, wage, and benefit history and are not permitted to make hiring decisions based on that information. Employers will also be prohibited from requiring that an applicant’s salary history satisfy certain minimum or maximum requirements.
The #MeToo movement has shone new light on issues for employers in the maritime industry seeking to ensure that seafarers and shore-based personnel can participate in a work environment free of sexual harassment and assault, both shipboard and shoreside. Employees at sea, often for months at a time, can face special challenges associated with a work environment that can be thousands of miles away from any home office, and that can lead to feelings of isolation, make communications difficult, involve close proximity between work spaces and living quarters and generally require employees to remain at the workplace during rest periods.
Since January 1, 2018, the date changes to the tax law passed by Congress at the end of December (the “Tax Act”) became effective and provided new individual marginal tax rates and modified deductions, the Internal Revenue Service (“IRS”) has been scrambling to provide guidance as to how those changes are to be taken into account for income withholding tax purposes.
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (the “Act”), which has been approved by the Senate and the House of Representatives, includes a provision that eliminates the “performance-based” exception to the $1 million limit on compensation deductions, and makes certain other important related changes. Under current law, compensation deductions for a publicly-traded employer for its top executives (other than the Chief Financial Officer) is limited to $1 million, plus compensation that qualifies as performance-based. Qualified performance-based pay generally includes stock options and stock appreciation rights, and restricted stock, restricted stock units, and cash incentive bonuses conditioned on the satisfaction of pre-established quantitative performance conditions approved in advance. 
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (the “Act”), which was agreed upon by the House/Senate Conference Committee last week, includes a provision that imposes an excise tax equal to the corporate tax rate—which is 21 percent under the Act—on certain compensation paid to employees of tax-exempt entities, including not only 501(c)(3) organizations, but also 501(c)(4) and 501(c)(6) organizations, as well as governmental employers and political organizations.
Earlier this year, New York City