Guidance documents database

PBGC’s position requiring distribution of assets as soon as practicable after PBGC’s 60-day review does not apply to surplus assets when there is a dispute concerning distribution.

Provider of advertising and public relations services is not a professional individual for purposes of the Professional Service Employer plan exemption.

Addresses a plan sponsor’s obligations when a plan terminates by mass withdrawal, including the payment of benefits to participants in a terminated plan.

Artist-designer is not a professional individual for purposes of the Professional Service Employer plan exemption.

Laid-off employees may accrue guaranteed benefits up to date of plan termination.

Individual account plan is exempt from coverage under Title IV.

Plan meets the Governmental plan coverage exemption.

Addresses the Professional Service Employer plan and Substantial Owner plan coverage exemptions.

Addresses whether an employer that has withdrawn from a multiemployer plan may be relieved of withdrawal liability by a subsequent sale of assets.

A plan year is the fiscal year on which the records of a plan are kept.

PBGC has no legal authority to terminate and then restore a pension plan in order to implement more lenient funding requirements for the successor plan.

How to determine eligibility for a “Category 3 Benefit,” which is a benefit of a participant who retired, or could have retired, 3 years or more before the plan terminated.

Standard termination of plans and establishment of new plans that do not include past service credits will not cause PBGC to reject a proper notice of intent to terminate.

Discusses how the five-year phase-in rule impacts guarantee of certain recent benefit increases and that certain early retirement supplements are not guaranteed.

Discusses the rules governing plan termination and notes that the employers may owe withdrawal liability.

Addresses whether immediate payment of the outstanding amount of an employer's withdrawal liability can be required if any installment is not paid during the withdrawal liability dispute resolution process and before the arbitrator's final decision. PBGC adopted a rule addressing the issue. (See 29 CFR part 4219, Subpt C.)

Conversion from a covered plan to an individual account plan is a termination.

A plan maintained by a clinical psychologist whose company provides marital and family counseling is a professional service employer plan.

Church plan status is determined by the IRS, must get an IRS ruling on church plan status.

Discusses the definition of “employer” in the context of withdrawal liability and how it applies to a group of trades or businesses under common control.

A proposed plan distribution must be in compliance with § 4044 regardless of whether the IRS has issued a determination letter regarding a plan termination. IRS cannot issue an exception to section 4044.

Optician is not a professional individual for purposes of the Professional Service Employer plan exemption.

Addresses which of two limitations on withdrawal liability applies—one applicable to a dissolving or liquidating employer, the other applicable to an employer that sold its assets to an unrelated party—when an employer satisfies the prerequisites for both.

PBGC will look to the terms of the plan documents in determining whether a benefit is nonforfeitable.

Addresses the joint employer doctrine under the National Labor Relations Act and whether a company that leased employees from an outsourcing firm that was a contributing employer to a multiemployer plan, and that was required to contribute to the plan as a "joint employer" with the outsourcing firm, would be subject to withdrawal liability if its obligation to contribute permanently ceased.