As the Code Section 139 relief period is scheduled to end soon along with the end of the COVID-19 national emergency, employers that assisted employees with personal expenses attributable to the COVID-19 pandemic should consider taking certain steps before the period ends.

Join Morgan Lewis this month for the following programs on employee benefits and executive compensation.

Congratulations to Morgan Lewis partner Handy Hevener, who has been honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award by the New York Law Journal as part of its 2020 New York Legal Awards.

US President Donald Trump signed the Paycheck Protection Program Flexibility Act of 2020 (the Act) on June 5, modifying certain provisions related to the forgiveness of loans under the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP). We recently published a LawFlash discussing these modifications.

This Insight authored by Morgan Lewis lawyers and published by Bloomberg Law poses 100 questions related to the COVID-19 payroll tax and fringe benefits provisions, which we have been explained in our LawFlashes.

Our employee benefits and executive compensation practice is available to help employers evaluate and troubleshoot potential issues arising from the changing work environment and economic situation caused by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Congratulations to Steven P. Johnson on his election to the Morgan Lewis partnership in our employee benefits and executive compensation practice! Effective October 1, 2019, Steve, who is resident in Washington, DC, will join 29 other newly elected partners from 12 offices and nine practices.

The IRS continues to aggressively audit how free meals and snacks offered to employees in many workplaces are treated for federal tax purposes. Recent IRS guidance in this respect is Technical Advice Memorandum 201903017 (the TAM) published this spring. The TAM, which includes both employer-favorable and IRS-favorable provisions, is essentially the first guidance on employer-provided meals and snacks that the IRS has published in nearly two decades.

Companies that provide meals and snacks on their “business premises,” as well as manufacturers of snack or breakroom products, will be particularly interested in a possible expansion of what many have assumed would be a 50% disallowance of deductions for all coffee, doughnuts, fruit, soft drinks, candy, and similar items, effective after 2017. A gap in the regulations points to the possibility that breakroom snacks that are considered de minimis fringe benefits provided on business premises might remain 100% deductible.

Act 43 of 2017 (the Act) created a new withholding obligation at the current applicable income tax rate (3.07%) for payors of Pennsylvania source income to non-residents if the total amount of such payments is at least $5,000. (Withholding is optional for payments of less than $5,000.)