With so many regulations in place, it’s often difficult to keep deadlines organized, not to mention determining whether the rules apply to your business in the first place.
One of those regulations is the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA). If you offer benefits or pension plans for your employees, you’ve probably encountered ERISA in some capacity.
Here, we’ll explain compliance standards, deadlines, and mistakes to avoid.
What Is ERISA Compliance?
ERISA compliance ensures that employer-sponsored benefit plans meet federal standards for transparency, reporting, and fiduciary responsibilities. Businesses that offer retirement or health plans must follow ERISA requirements to protect employee benefits and avoid costly penalties.
Primary responsibilities for employers to comply with ERISA include five important items:
- Detailed disclosure to covered individuals (employees and beneficiaries, including features and funding details.
- Annual reporting through Form 5500, if required.
- A strict fiduciary code of conduct for plan sponsors and administrators.
- Maintenance and distribution of Summary Plan Descriptions (SPDs) and Summary of Material Modifications (SMMs).
- Ensuring plans follow participation, vesting, and benefit accrual rules.
Make sure your benefits comply with ERISA by using our ERISA Compliance Checklist.
Ongoing ERISA Compliance Requirements
Compliance extends beyond meeting initial requirements. Instead, employers must stay on top of ongoing obligations, including:
- Annual Form 5500 filing: Most plans must file Form 5500 annually with the Department of Labor (DOL) and IRS.
- ERISA wrap documents: Employers offering multiple benefits often need a wrap document to consolidate plan details into a single SPD for easier administration.
- Plan audits: Large plans (100+ participants) require independent audits.
- Participant notices: Employers must provide timely notices like Summary Annual Reports (SARs) and plan amendments.
- Fiduciary responsibilities: Employers and plan administrators must act in participants’ best interests and avoid conflicts of interest.
- ERISA compliance training: Ongoing training helps HR teams and plan fiduciaries understand their responsibilities and stay ahead of regulatory updates.
Tip: Staying on top of ERISA compliance requires proactive management, regular training, and thorough documentation. Employers should consult ERISA experts or legal advisors to ensure their benefit plans meet all regulatory requirements.
2025 ERISA Compliance Deadlines
Keeping up with ERISA compliance means tracking key deadlines throughout the year. There are many deadlines associated with ERISA; the following are for 2025 and based on the calendar year.
Here’s a breakdown of important dates for plan administrators and employers.
Note: If an IRS or Department of Labor deadline falls on a weekend or federal holiday, it typically moves to the next business day.
January
- January 31 – Employers must distribute Form 1099-R to participants who received plan distributions in the prior year.
February
- February 14 – Deadline to provide defined contribution (DC) plan participants with their quarterly benefit/disclosure statement, including actual plan fees and expenses from the last quarter of 2024. This is due 45 days after quarter-end.
- February 28 – Last day for plan administrators to submit Form 1099-R to the IRS, reporting distributions made in the previous calendar year.
March
- March 15 – Deadline to process corrective distributions for Non-Safe Harbor plans that failed the ADP/ACP test from the prior year to avoid a 10% excise tax.
- Deadline to file tax returns for S corporations, LLCs, and partnerships operating on a calendar-year basis, including deductible retirement plan contributions (unless an extension is filed).
- Deadline to request a waiver of the minimum funding standard for money purchase pension plans.
- March 31 – Last day for electronic filing of Form 1099-R for 2024 distributions.
April
- April 1—Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs) must be made to participants who turn 73 in 2024 or those who terminate employment, whichever occurs later.
- April 15 – Deadline to process corrective distributions for participants who exceeded the annual contribution limit under IRC Section 402(g) in the prior year.
- Last day to file tax returns for C corporations, sole proprietors, and individuals, including deductible retirement plan contributions (unless an extension is filed).
May
- May 15 – Due date for DC plan administrators to send quarterly benefit/disclosure statements for Q1, including actual plan fees and expenses.
June
- June 30 – Last day to correct an ACP test failure from the prior year for a plan with an Eligible Automatic Contribution Arrangement (EACA) to avoid a 10% excise tax.
July
- July 29 – Deadline to distribute any required Summary of Material Modifications (SMMs) for plan amendments made in the prior year.
- July 31 – Form 5500 must be filed for ERISA-covered plans (unless an extension is requested).
- Deadline to file Form 5330 to report excise taxes on prohibited transactions or late plan contributions.
- Employers can request an extension for Form 5500 by submitting Form 5558, extending the deadline to October 15.
August
- August 14 – Quarterly benefit/disclosure statements for Q2, including actual fees and expenses, must be provided to DC plan participants.
September
- September 15 – Money purchase pension plans must make required contributions no later than 8½ months after the end of the plan year.
- For S corporations and partnerships that filed a tax extension, employer profit-sharing, and matching contributions are due.
- September 30 – Summary Annual Reports (SARs) must be distributed to participants if Form 5500 was filed by the July 31 deadline.
October
- October 15 – Last day to adopt retroactive plan amendments to correct an IRC Section 410(b) coverage failure or a Section 401(a)(4) non-discrimination failure from the prior year.
- Extended deadline for Form 5500 if an extension was filed.
November
- November 14 – Deadline for providing DC plan participants with their quarterly benefit/disclosure statement for Q3, including actual plan fees and expenses.
- November 15—If the Form 5500 deadline was extended, SARs must be distributed to participants. When the Internal Revenue Service grants an extension of time to file an annual report, such furnishing shall take place within two months after the close of the period for which the extension was granted.
December
- December 1 –
- Annual notice deadline for automatic contribution arrangements, including those under 401(k) and 403(b) plans.
- Safe Harbor plan notices must be provided to eligible participants.
- Employers must distribute Qualified Default Investment Alternative (QDIA) notices to participants who haven’t made investment elections.
- December 15 – SARs are due if Form 5500 was extended using Form 5558.
- December 31 –
- Deadline for discretionary plan amendments (with some exceptions).
- Last day to correct ADP/ACP test failures for the prior year.
- Final opportunity to elect Safe Harbor status for the previous plan year with a non-elective contribution of at least 4% of compensation.
- Deadline for 2025 Required Minimum Distributions (RMDs).
Common ERISA Compliance Mistakes
Unfortunately, even well-intentioned businesses can run into compliance issues. Here are some common mistakes to avoid:
1. Failing to Disclose Plan Information
All employers offering a group health plan or other ERISA-qualified benefit to two or more employees are subject to ERISA, except for government entities and churches.
ERISA’s disclosure requirement mandates that employers maintain a written Plan Document and distribute SPDs to participants. This requirement may be made easier by incorporating all benefits into a “wrap” plan document. A certificate of insurance or benefit plan summary isn’t an ERISA compliance document, nor is it a Section 125 cafeteria plan document.
The SPD must be distributed within 90 days after the participant becomes covered under the plan or within 30 days of a participant’s request.
2. Deducting Pre-Tax Employee Contributions without a Section 125 Document
Employers must have a cafeteria plan or premium-only plan (POP) document in place to deduct employee contributions pre-tax to pay for qualified benefits. This is an IRS requirement.
Within the ERISA SPD, you must list how premiums are paid by the employer and/or the employee, which may trigger an inquiry into the existence of your Cafeteria Plan Document.
Failure to have a written Section 125 Plan document at the time of an IRS audit could cause this domino effect:
- Amended corporate tax returns.
- Amended W-2s for all employees who had deductions.
- Amended tax returns for those affected employees.
3. Creating a Self-Administered FSA or HRA Without Appropriate Documentation
Within ERISA documentation, you must list health FSA and HRA eligibility and funding methods.
Self and fully-administered health FSA and HRA plans require:
- Formal documentation (including a written plan document and summary plan description).
- Annual nondiscrimination testing.
Reminder: ERISA plan documentation will include all eligibility information, waiting periods, funding methods, and variable-hour employee measurement period timelines, if applicable, for all ERISA-qualified benefits.
4. Small Employers Segregating Assets for Self-Insured Plans, FSAs, or HRAs.
Here’s a typical scenario: An employer hires a third-party administrator, adopts an HRA or FSA, and is concerned about the account’s reconciliation. Oftentimes, the employer opens another employer-based account in the plan’s name and funds it fully or with a portion of the estimated liability.
Unfortunately, segregating assets may result in the creation of an actual trust account or take the employer outside Technical Release 92-01 (a rule exempting small employers from filing a 5500), thus requiring them to file Form 5500 for that benefit and attaching either a Schedule H or Schedule I (depending on the size of the employer). To avoid this result, employers should remove the appearance of a segregated and/or funded account.
You can avoid the appearance of a segregated and/or funded account by:
- Funding all benefits out of the general assets of the employer.
- Paying/reimbursing premiums and expenses from the employer’s general checking or operations account or creating a new zero balance account in the employer’s name.
5. Failing to Properly Administer the Plan According to Plan Documents or Certificates of Coverage
It’s common for employers to periodically update their benefit eligibility provisions (e.g., waiting periods and hours of eligibility). However, many employers that change their eligibility provisions fail to update their certificates of coverage.
The issue? They end up administering their plan with different waiting periods and hours of eligibility than are reflected in their plan documentation. This mistake impacts ERISA and ACA requirements and could lead to employee litigation in the event of a dispute.
Remember: The certificates of coverage are controlling; ERISA documentation should mirror the controlling language in the certificates. If any of the eligibility or funding information has changed since those certificates were adopted, the employer should ask for amended certificates.
6. Filing One Form 5500 for Multiple Benefit Plans Without a Wrap Document
Unless an ERISA wrap document is in place, you should file a separate Form 5500 for each individual benefit contract. For example, if an employer without an ERISA wrap document has a fully insured medical plan with United Healthcare and a fully insured dental plan through Delta Dental, they should file two separate Form 5500s, each with an appropriately completed Schedule A attached.
Tip: Before you create a wrap document, evaluate the number of covered participants in each plan at the start of the plan year. Benefits not hitting the 100-participant threshold are not subject to the filing requirement.
7. Late Filing or Failure to File Forms 5500
An alarming number of fully insured plans fail to file Form 5550 promptly.
The ERISA filing requirement affects large employers: 100 or more covered participants (AKA enrolled employees) at the start of the plan year. Small employers may need to file if any of their plans are considered funded, as we described in mistake number four. If an employer has an ERISA wrap plan document in place, they must file for all of their wrapped benefits if one component benefit goes over the 100-participant threshold at the start of the plan year.
Form 5500 filing is due the last day of the 7th month after the end of the plan year. For example, calendar-year plans (ending on December 31) must file Form 5500 by July 31 of the following year. A two-and-a-half-month extension can be granted by filing Form 5558 by the original Form 5500 filing deadline.
Tip: Be proactive. Have you missed a required filing? Utilize the delinquent filer voluntary compliance program (DFVCP) to cap any potential penalties or fines. Don’t wait until you’re audited to become compliant with Form 5500 requirements!