Now is the Climate for Change
Latest from Compensation and Benefits Global Insights
Supreme Court Ruling Limits Insurer and Employer Contraceptive Obligations (US)
Stacey Grundman, Doug Anderson and Meghna Rao recently published an article on the Supreme Court’s decision adopted under the Trump administration significantly cutting back the requirement that insurers and group health plans provide coverage for contraceptives without cost sharing under the Affordable Care Act (ACA) on our Employment Law Worldview blog. To read the full blog post online here.
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Transfers of Personal Data Outside the EEA: Action Required for Pension Schemes
Does your pensions administrator or any other service provider access your personal data from outside the EEA, such as in the US? If so, it is important to take action now to ensure continued compliance with your obligations as data controller. This could also apply to schemes with a sponsoring employer (or parent company) located outside the EEA in addition to schemes whose third party administrator hosts client personal data on servers situated outside the…
PPF to doff its compensation cap
On 22 June 2020, the High Court ruled in Hughes v Board of the Pension Protection Fund that certain restrictions applied to benefits paid from the Pension Protection Fund (PPF) are unlawful on age discrimination grounds.…
COVID-19: Yet More Relief, and More Certainty, for EMI Option Holders
On Tuesday, 21 July 2020, the Government announced further good news for companies operating enterprise management incentive (EMI) share option schemes that will allow them to continue to grant new options to individuals who:
have been furloughed under the Coronavirus Job Retention Scheme (CJRS), or
have taken unpaid leave, or
have had their working hours reduced
as a result of COVID-19.
EMI option holders are normally required to commit at least 25 hours a week…
Lost in the post: solving the case of the missing member!
TPO has ruled that a pension scheme was liable to pay a full deferred pension to a claimant, despite the scheme having no record of his benefits other than a guaranteed minimum pension (GMP). This determination shows the significant weight that TPO places on HMRC’s GMP records and the inferences that can be made from those records.…
COVID-19: Expenses of Working from Home – The Tax Rules
The coronavirus (COVID-19) ‘lock-down’ has necessitated large swathes of the working population to perform their duties from home. As a result, working-from-home has become the ‘new normal’ for many employees in recent months.
Employers will be considering how best to assist their employees to work most efficiently and effectively from home while the lock-down endures. In doing so, keeping in mind the tax implications of their actions will be beneficial.…
The Geometry and Trigonometry of the Corporate Insolvency and Governance Act – What Is the Final Pensions Angle?
COVID-19: A New Relief for EMI Option Holders
Late on Friday, 26 June 2020, with little fanfare, the Chancellor of the Exchequer tabled a new clause for inclusion in the Finance Bill 2020 (FB 2020) during its Report stage in the House of Commons. It addresses a key concern around furloughed employees who hold enterprise management incentive (EMI) options (as discussed previously on this blog), and confirms that EMI optionholders will not lose the beneficial tax status of their options as a result…
Flexibility Act Makes Key Change to CARES Act Payroll Tax Deferral Incentive and Other Key Changes
Following up on our prior post (here), regarding the Paycheck Protection Program loans (“PPP Loans”), President Trump signed the Paycheck Protection Program Flexibility Act of 2020 into law (the “Flexibility Act”) on June 5, 2020. The Flexibility Act relaxes and modifies certain requirements to obtain PPP Loan forgiveness. Specifically, the Flexibility Act makes five main changes:
Payroll Tax Deferral. The CARES Act allows employers to defer the employer’s portion of social security tax…