Guidance documents database

Addresses whether a reciprocity agreement operates to impose on certain employers and defined contribution pension plans the minimum contribution requirements or the withdrawal liability provisions of the law.

Addresses whether a withdrawal liability overpayment must be refunded by a multiemployer plan sponsor to an employer where the plan sponsor subsequently discovers the underlying calculation error and the employer had failed to initiate the plan review and arbitration process.

Because benefit increases became effective through collective bargaining agreements (not specific action by the Board of Trustees), PBGC looks to the adoption and effective dates of those agreements to apply the five-year phase-in rule.

Individual account plan is exempt from coverage under Title IV.

Individual account plan exemption from coverage.

Addresses the applicability of the “sale of assets exception: to the construction industry complete withdrawal rules.

Title IV does not cover Individual account plans or welfare plans.

Addresses the calculation of partial withdrawal liability and why the allocation fraction uses a ratio of contribution base units as opposed to contributions.

Addresses the meaning of “total amount contributed” for the purpose of the denominators in PBGC’s interim regulation on withdrawal liability alternative allocation methods.

Surveying and engineering design consultant is a professional individual for purposes of the Professional Service Employer plan coverage exemption.

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 incorporation of a sole proprietorship constitutes a withdrawal from a multiemployer pension plan where the successor corporation becomes party to the collective bargaining agreement and continues to contribute to the plan on behalf of its employees for the same operations for which contributions were previously contributed by the sole proprietor.

Licensed clinical laboratory bio-analyst is a professional individual for purposes of the Professional Service Employer plan exemption.

Termination is not subject to the spin-off/termination requirements of the implementation guidelines involving asset reversions since no assets will revert to the plan sponsor.

All affected parties may submit comments to PBGC on a proposed distress termination.

Embalmer and funeral director is not a professional individual for purposes of the Professional Service Employer plan exemption.

Welfare plans are not covered under Title IV.

Addresses the distribution of residual assets to an employer.

A restated plan document created an aggregate of single plans and not a single pension plan, with a valid allocation of assets among those separate plans.

Profit sharing plans are excluded from coverage under Title IV.

Addresses whether a multiemployer plan with only one remaining contributing employer continues to be a multiemployer plan.