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Benefits — Georgia

When Congress enacted the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) in 1974, it wanted to balance two competing concerns:

  1. protecting employees who had been promised certain benefits by their employers
  2. giving employers a set of rules by which they could operate and maintain uniform employee benefit plans for numerous facilities without interference from varying state laws. 

ERISA only covers certain types of employee benefit plans, as summarized below. For these employee benefit plans and their administrators and fiduciaries, ERISA sets forth certain minimum standards and prescribes rules that must be followed. These standards are set out in four titles of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act: 

  • Title I sets out specific protections of employees’ rights in pension and welfare benefit plans.
  • Title II specifies the requirements under the Internal Revenue Code (the Code) for plan qualification (i.e., tax preferences to benefit plans).
  • Title III directs responsibility for administering and enforcing ERISA to the Department of Labor (DOL) and the Treasury Department.
  • Title IV established the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC), which ensures certain minimum benefits will be available under certain...


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