Removal of Interpretive Bulletins Relating to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974

<RULE> DEPARTMENT OF LABOR <SUBAGY>Employee Benefits Security Administration</SUBAGY> <CFR>29 CFR Part 2509</CFR> <RIN>RIN 1210-AC32</RIN> <SUBJECT>Removal of Interpretive Bulletins Relating to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974</SUBJECT> <HD SOURCE="HED">AGENCY:</HD> Employee Benefits Security Administration, Department of Labor. <HD SOURCE="HED">ACTION:</HD> Direct final rule (DFR); request for comments. <SUM> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUMMARY:</HD> This DFR removes from the Code of Federal Regulations prospectively certain interpretive bulletins under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 that the Department of Labor (DOL) believes are obsolete. The obsolete interpretive bulletins were published shortly after ERISA's enactment in 1974 to provide compliance assistance for employee benefit plans, plan sponsors and fiduciaries. Because of subsequent guidance issued by the DOL, and the effect of Reorganization Plan No. 4 of 1978, the DOL believes the interpretive bulletins are no longer needed, and if left on the books, add potential confusion and unnecessary complexity. Removing obsolete regulations eliminates the burden on the public of having to determine whether they need to comply with the regulations. This action is being taken pursuant to Executive Order 14192, titled Unleashing Prosperity Through Deregulation (90 FR 9065, Feb. 6, 2025). This action improves the daily lives of the American people by reducing unnecessary, burdensome, and costly Federal regulations. </SUM> <EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">DATES:</HD> The final rule is effective September 2, 2025, unless significant adverse comments are received by July 31, 2025. Significant adverse comments are ones which oppose the rule and raise, alone or in combination, a serious enough issue related to each of the independent grounds for the rule that a substantive response is required. If significant adverse comments are received, notification will be published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> before the effective date either withdrawing the rule or issuing a new final rule which responds to significant adverse comments. </EFFDATE> <HD SOURCE="HED">ADDRESSES:</HD> The Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) encourages interested persons to submit their comments on this request for information online. You may submit comments, identified by RIN 1210-AC32, by either of the following methods: <E T="03">Federal eRulemaking Portal: https://www.regulations.gov.</E> Follow the instructions for submitting comments. <E T="03">Mail:</E> Office of Regulations and Interpretations, Employee Benefits Security Administration, Room N-5655, U.S. Department of Labor, 200 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20210, Attn: Removal of Interpretive Bulletins Relating to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 RIN 1210-AC32. <E T="03">Instructions:</E> All submissions must include the agency name and Regulatory Identifier Number RIN 1210-AC32 for this request. If you submit comments online, do not submit paper copies. All comments received will be posted without change on <E T="03">https://www.regulations.gov</E> and <E T="03">https://www.dol.gov/agencies/ebsa</E> and will be made available for public inspection at the Public Disclosure Room, N-1513, Employee Benefits Security Administration, U.S. Department of Labor, 200 Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC 20210. <E T="03">Warning:</E> Do not include any personally identifiable or confidential business information that you do not want publicly disclosed. Comments are public records that are posted online as received and can be retrieved by most internet search engines. <FURINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">FOR FURTHER INFORMATION CONTACT:</HD> Fred Wong, Office of Regulations and Interpretations, Employee Benefits Security Administration, (202) 693-8500. This is not a toll-free number. </FURINF> <SUPLINF> <HD SOURCE="HED">SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION:</HD> <HD SOURCE="HD1">I. Background and Discussion</HD> The Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) is a comprehensive Federal law that sets minimum standards for most voluntarily established employee benefit plans in private industry. Title I of ERISA protects the interests of participants and their beneficiaries in employee benefit plans by, among other things, requiring that those individuals who manage plans (and other fiduciaries) (1) meet certain standards of conduct, derived from the common law of trusts and made applicable (with certain modifications) to all fiduciaries, and (2) comply with certain “prohibited transactions” restrictions described in the statute. Title II of ERISA, which amended the Internal Revenue Code (Code) to parallel many of the Title I provisions, contains standards that must be met by employee retirement benefit plans in order to qualify for favorable tax treatment. Under ERISA as originally enacted, the DOL and the U.S. Treasury Department's Internal Revenue Service (IRS) had overlapping responsibility for administration of the parallel provisions of Title I of ERISA and the Code. Shortly after ERISA's enactment, the DOL published in the <E T="04">Federal Register</E> a number of Interpretive Bulletins to provide a concise and ready reference to its interpretations of ERISA. <SU>1</SU> <FTREF/> Interpretive Bulletin 75-2, codified at 29 CFR 2509.75-2, provided the DOL's views on whether a “party in interest”  <SU>2</SU> <FTREF/> has engaged in a prohibited transaction with an employee benefit plan where the party in interest has engaged in a transaction with an entity in which the plan has invested. <SU>3</SU> <FTREF/> However, since publication of Interpretive Bulletin 75-2, the DOL has provided further guidance on prohibited transaction issues in subregulatory guidance. <SU>4</SU> <FTREF/> The DOL believes the Interpretive Bulletin no longer serves its intended purpose of providing a concise and ready reference to the DOL's interpretations of ERISA's prohibited transaction restrictions. The DOL therefore is removing this Interpretive Bulletin. <FTNT> <SU>1</SU>  40 FR 31598 (July 28, 1975), redesignated by 41 FR 1906 (Jan. 13, 1976). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>2</SU>  ERISA section 3(14), 29 U.S.C. 1002(14). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>3</SU>  40 FR 31598. In 1986, the DOL revised Interpretive Bulletin 75-2 in connection with adoption of the DOL's regulation at 29 CFR 2510.3-101. See 51 FR 41280 (Nov. 13, 1986). In 1996, the Interpretive Bulletin was further revised following the Supreme Court decision in <E T="03">John Hancock Mutual Life Insurance Co.</E> v. <E T="03">Harris Trust & Savings Bank</E> , 510 U.S. 86 (1993). See 61 FR 33847 (July 1, 1996). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>4</SU>  See, <E T="03">e.g.,</E> Advisory Opinion 2006-09A (Dec. 19, 2006)(individual retirement account (IRA) investment in notes offered by a corporation in which a son-in-law of the IRA owner is the majority stockholder); 2006-01A (Jan. 6, 2006)(IRA investment in a limited liability company that would purchase real estate and lease it to an entity in which the IRA owner has a 68% ownership interest). </FTNT> Interpretive Bulletin 75-6, codified at 29 CFR 2509.75-6, related to ERISA section 408(c)(2) and whether a plan could make an advance to a fiduciary to cover expenses to be properly and actually incurred by such person in performing duties with respect to the plan. <SU>5</SU> <FTREF/> However, in 1977, the Department issued a final regulation under section 408(c)(2) at 29 CFR 2550.408c-2 that replaced Interpretive Bulletin 75-6. <SU>6</SU> <FTREF/> Accordingly, the Department believes that Interpretive Bulletin 75-6 is no longer necessary. There is no reason to permit identical standards for the same conduct to exist in two different parts of the Code of Federal Regulations. Indeed, analyzing both regulations to determine whether they are different or cover different conduct only wastes time and resources that could be more productively employed. <FTNT> <SU>5</SU>  40 FR 31755 (July 29, 1975), redesignated by 41 FR 1906 (Jan. 13, 1976). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>6</SU>  42 FR 32389, 32390 (June 24, 1977) (“The attention of interested parties is directed to the fact that regulation 2550.408c-2 replaces Interpretive Bulletin 75-6”). </FTNT> Interpretive Bulletin 75-10, codified at 29 CFR 2509.75-10, addressed ambiguity arising from the joint jurisdiction of the Department and IRS with respect to parallel provisions in title I of ERISA and the Code. Interpretive Bulletin 75-10 cross referenced specific guidance documents issued by the IRS on the application of the qualification requirements of the Code, as added or amended by ERISA, and requirements of the provisions of parts 2 and 3 of Title I of ERISA paralleling such qualification requirements. It stated that plans complying with the IRS guidance documents would be considered by the Department as satisfying the requirements of the parallel provisions of Title I of ERISA. <SU>7</SU> <FTREF/> A few years later, the Reorganization Plan No. 4 of 1978 generally resolved issues related to joint interpretive jurisdiction of the parallel provisions by, with certain exceptions, assigning responsibility to one or the other agency. <SU>8</SU> <FTREF/> The DOL therefore believes Interpretive Bulletin 75-10 is no longer necessary. <FTNT> <SU>7</SU>  41 FR 3289 (Jan. 22, 1976). </FTNT> <FTNT> <SU>8</SU>  43 FR 47713 (Oct. 17, 1978). Congress subsequently ratified Reorganization Plan No. 4 in 1984. See Sec. 1, Public Law 98-532, 98 Stat. 2705 (Oct. 19, 1984). </FTNT> For the reasons mentioned above, the DOL believes the interpretive bulletins are no longer needed, and if left on the books, add potential confusion and unnecessary complexity. Removing obsolete regulations eliminates the burden on the public ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ Preview showing 10k of 21k characters. Full document text is stored and available for version comparison. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━