Furnishing Documents to the Secretary of Labor on Request Under Employee Retirement Income Security Act Section 104(a)(6)

Prior to the enactment of the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997 (Pub. L. 105–34, August 5, 1997) (TRA `97), section 104(a) of the Employee Retirement Security Act of 1974 (ERISA) required administrators of employee benefit plans automatically to file the plan's summary plan description (SPD) and any summaries of material modification (SMMs) with the Secretary of the Department of Labor (the Department). TRA `97 eliminated the requirement that these documents be filed automatically with the Department, but added ERISA section 104(a)(6), requiring a plan administrator to furnish documents related to an employee benefit plan to the Department upon request. The requirement that administrators furnish the Department requested plan documents other than SPDs and SMMs was part of section 104(a) prior to enactment of TRA '97; that requirement was moved by TRA '97 to section 104(a)(6) and consolidated with the new furnishing requirement pertaining to SPDs and SMMs. Pursuant to the regulation, the Department requests documents under section 104(a)(6) when a participant or beneficiary has previously requested the documents directly from the plan administrator and the administrator has failed or refused to provide them. The Department therefore uses the requested information to respond to participants' requests to the Department for documents that the participants were unable to obtain from their plan administrators.

The latest form for Furnishing Documents to the Secretary of Labor on Request Under Employee Retirement Income Security Act Section 104(a)(6) expires 2027-06-30 and can be found here.