ERISA Technical Release No. 88-1

This document is about the U.S. Department of Labor's announcement of its enforcement policy regarding the application of its recently published plan assets-participant contribution regulation under the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA) to cafeteria plans described in section 125 of the Internal Revenue Code. The Department recognizes that the application of the regulation to cafeteria plans may raise particular problems for plan sponsors and fiduciaries seeking to comply, and therefore, it will not assert a violation solely because of the failure to hold participant contributions to cafeteria plans in trust, pending consideration of regulatory exemptive relief from the trust requirement for certain welfare plan arrangements.