Compliance support
A calendar and a checklist. Not legal advice.
Most benefits compliance failures at this size are not decisions. They are dates nobody was tracking. We track them, tell you what is coming, and tell you plainly when the answer needs a lawyer rather than a broker.
What you get
- A dated calendar for your plan year, not a generic one
- Notices prepared and ready to distribute
- A reminder before each deadline, not after
- A record of what was sent and when
Included with the plans we place. Not sold separately, and not a substitute for counsel.
Where the line is
We are not your lawyers, and we will not pretend to be.
A broker can tell you a notice is due, prepare it, and make sure it goes out. A broker cannot tell you whether your particular arrangement satisfies a statute, whether an employee is correctly classified, or how a rule applies to a situation with facts in it.
Those are legal questions and they need an employment lawyer. We will say so rather than guess, every time, and we would rather lose an afternoon to that answer than have you rely on a broker's opinion about the law.
What we are good for is that nothing arrives unannounced. In our experience the failures at this size are almost never a wrong judgement call — they are a deadline that passed while everyone was busy.
[ This is the highest-risk page in the bundle. Every date, threshold, notice name and applicability rule below must be verified against current federal law and against Washington, Oregon and Idaho state law before publishing, and re-verified on a defined annual cycle. A compliance calendar that silently goes stale is worse than none. Attorney review required. ]
The year
What comes due, and roughly when.
Anchored to your plan year rather than the calendar year, because for most of our clients those are not the same thing. Your actual dates come with your calendar.
Plan year
Before it starts
Open enrollment notices
The set that has to reach employees before elections — summary of benefits, the plan's own summary, and the notices your arrangement triggers. We prepare these and you distribute them, which keeps the record clean.
Enrollment
The window
Elections and waivers
Every eligible employee elects or declines in writing. The waivers matter as much as the elections — they are what demonstrates the participation requirement was met if a carrier ever asks.
Ongoing
All year
New hires and departures
Each new hire has an eligibility waiting period and an enrollment window. Each departure triggers continuation rights, which differ depending on your size and which state the employee is in. This is where small companies most often slip.
Annual
Filings
Reporting and filings
Which returns and statements apply depends on your headcount, your funding structure and whether you have a plan subject to federal reporting. We tell you which apply to you; your accountant or counsel files them.
Threshold
As you grow
Crossing fifty
Passing the applicable-large-employer threshold changes your obligations materially. It is measured on a lookback, not on today’s headcount — so it is possible to cross it without noticing until the obligations have already attached. We watch it for you.
[ Deliberately no statute names, form numbers, day counts or headcount figures — all change and all vary by arrangement. If the client wants specifics they belong in a separately maintained, dated, annually reviewed document, not in page copy. ]
Division of labour
Who does what
Being explicit about this at the outset prevents the failure mode where everybody assumes somebody else has it. In a company of eighteen, that assumption is how a deadline goes past.
If you do not have employment counsel, say so early. Several of the questions on this page will eventually need one, and finding a lawyer in the week a deadline lands is not the moment to start.
The split
We do
Track the dates, prepare the notices, keep the record, tell you what is coming and when a question needs escalating.
You do
Distribute the notices, keep us informed of hires and departures, and tell us when headcount moves.
Your counsel does
Anything turning on how a law applies to your facts — classification, eligibility design, anything with a dispute in it.
Your accountant does
The filings and the tax treatment. We tell you which apply; we do not prepare them.
Not sure what applies to you?
Tell us your headcount, your states and your plan year. That is enough to say which of this is yours.