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The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) recently issued its revamped proposed rules governing employer-sponsored wellness programs. These proposed rules have been a long time coming, with the EEOC’s prior rules on the topic having been invalidated by a court and then partially revoked. In this current proposal, the EEOC has issued two separate sets of regulations: one under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and one under the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 (GINA).

The Consolidated Appropriations Act (CAA), 2021, which was signed into law December 27, 2020, includes provisions designed to increase transparency in employee health benefit plans in four key areas.

The Internal Revenue Code is famously complicated, and changes to discrete parts of the code—such as those adopted by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA)—have a notorious history of leading to unpredictable and unintended consequences. One such consequence may require prompt action by publicly-traded companies to mitigate the impact of a common provision in nonqualified deferred compensation plans relating to the limitations on deductions for excess compensation paid to top executives.

On October 26, 2020, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) updated various dollar limitations that apply to tax-qualified retirement plans for 2021. The new amounts, published in Notice 2020-79, are annually adjusted for cost of living.

At the end of 2019, President Donald Trump signed into law the Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement (SECURE) Act, which included a number of changes to employer-sponsored retirement plans. One change involved expanding the ability of long-term, part-time employees to make 401(k) deferral contributions. While this change becomes effective in 2024, employers that apply an eligibility service requirement to determine whether employees can contribute to a 401(k) plan must begin tracking hours of service for part-time employees beginning January 1, 2021.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) recently announced a new human capital disclosure requirement for public companies to “reflect the many changes in our capital markets and the domestic and global economy in recent decades.” Over the past several years, human capital has become increasingly important to investors. “Human capital” generally refers to the value of a company’s workforce, which is often influenced by a company’s policies and procedures related to recruitment, retention, training, development, health and safety, diversity and inclusion, and culture. Investors see human capital as an essential component in creating long-term shareholder value and have increasingly prioritized strong human capital practices.

On paper, the rule is straightforward: if a company sponsors a defined benefit pension plan or participates in a union/multiemployer pension plan in the United States, all members of that company’s controlled group of corporations (e.g., parents, subsidiaries, and affiliates connected through a common equity ownership of 80 percent or more), including foreign corporations, are jointly and severally liable for that company’s pension-related liabilities.

Most employer-sponsored health plans will be exempt from the primary Affordable Care Act (ACA) provision governing race, color, age, sex, disability, and national origin discrimination under new final rules issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Only plans (or other covered programs and activities) that receive financial assistance from HHS or that are sponsored by entities principally engaged in providing healthcare will have to comply with ACA Section 1557.