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SAR for eligible participants


Belgarath

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I've always understood that these must be provided if you are eligible to defer, even if you choose not to. This is being questioned. I don't see any exemption as being available under the regs - I'm talking about an active, eligible employee, albeit with no account balance. Am I nuts, or missing something? Maybe just Monday fog...

 

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I find the more appropriate question - how about an SAR for someone who was a participant but terminated and took their money? 

I terminate and roll my money out in January 2016.  Now it's December 14, 2017, and the plan sponsor owes an SAR to all plan participants for 2016.  Hopefully I haven't moved twice. 

I wish we could apply the idea that if someone's already paid out by the time you'd report them on an 8955-SSA, they don't need to be listed - apply that same logic to the distribution of the SAR.

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as close as you can get is

29 CFR 2520.104b-10(a) which states in part that "the administrator of any

employee benefit plan shall furnish annually to each participant of such

plan and to each beneficiary receiving benefits under such plan (other

than beneficiaries under a welfare plan) a summary annual report ".

............................

that was from an old post with the added comment

there is nothing that says "only participants with a balance"

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the problem with the cite is it doesn't specify if it is 'participant at anytime during the year' or 'only at the end of the year

however, all sample language I have seen for SARs has the line

 

Benefits under the plan are provided by (indicate funding arrangements). Plan expenses were ($ ). These expenses included ($ ) in administrative expenses and ($ ) in benefits paid to participants and beneficiaries, and ($ ) in other expenses. A total of ( ) persons were participants in or beneficiaries of the plan at the end of the plan year, although not all of these persons had yet earned the right to receive benefits.

 

so I would argue using that for the definition of participant (EOY)

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We were diving into this a few weeks ago in my office--We had a brewery client that was purchased by one of the mega-food corps & the old plan was terminated mid-2016.  We didn't get all the cash out until early 2017, so all of those Employees had to receive 2 year's worth of SAR for Plans that hadn't existed for over a year.  The Plan Sponsor was non-plussed, but better safe than sorry.  

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