Employee Benefits in the United States

Legal Materials

To find out employers’ costs for employee benefits, see v.1, tab 10, of Collective Bargaining: Negotiations and Contracts (BNA). Also, check out the EBRI Databook on Employee Benefits (EBRI).

Lists of the most family-friendly workplaces are published by Business Week, Fortune,Working Mother and Mother Jones. The Labor Department publishes an “Honor Roll” of employers friendly to families. The White House and the Conference Board give out the Ron Brown award for employee- and community-relations.

Good sources for employee benefits treatises include Thompson Publishing Group, Aspen Publishers, the Employee Benefits Institute of America and BNA Books.

BNA’s subscription-based Compensation & Benefits Library and Benefits Practice Center offer benefits-related laws, regulations, agency publications and secondary materials. The 300-series of BNA Tax Management Portfolios cover employee benefits issues.

CCH publishes a Pension Plan Guide, Employee Benefits Management andCompliance Guide for Administrators. These books are available in print, on Lexis and in the subscription-based Pension Library, available through Intelliconnect. CCH also offers Aspen’s benefits books in the Aspen Benefits eLibrary through Intelliconnect. Finally, CCH publishes the Plan Administrator’s Newsletter, which is available on Lexis back to February 2009 (CCHTAX;PLADMN).

Every year the American Academy of Actuaries and the Conference of Consulting Actuaries sponsor an Enrolled Actuaries Meeting, where U.S. government officials answer questions relevant to benefit professionals. There is a Blue Book (Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation), a Green Book (Employee Benefits Security Administration) and a Gray Book (IRS). There is also a “Super Gray Book” CD-ROM that includes all the Gray Books from 1990 to the present, with a subject index.

For information on the Employee Benefits Security Administration and/or ERISA Advisory Opinion Letters, see the “United States Department of Labor” entry.

Section 409A: Section 409A of the Internal Revenue Code (Title 26 of the U.S. Code) sets strict requirements for deferring tax on nonqualified deferred compensation. The section is notoriously tricky. Treatises on the topic include the Section 409A Handbook(BNA) and the Practical Guide to Code Section 409A (CCH).

Stock Plans: The National Center for Employee Ownership publishes a series of books on equity compensation plans. Members of the National Association of Stock Plan Professionals can access a wealth of information on the NASPP web site. Also of possible interest: Compensation Structures for Venture Capital Backed Companies: How to Structure Compensation, Stock Options, Retirement, Debt & Bonus Plans for Management and Employees (West/Aspatore Books). For tax issues, see the relevant BNA Tax Management Portfolios.

Resources

See Also

Collective Bargaining
Compensation
Human Resources
Management Consulting
Labor Law
Labor Statistics
United States Department of Labor
Workers’ Compensation

Further Reading

• Information about Employee Benefits in the Gale Encyclopedia of American Law.