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Hardship Withdrawals


Cynchbeast

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The proposed rule remains a proposed rule.

 

Analyzing all comments, writing explanations about how an agency was or wasn’t persuaded to revise the proposed rule, and other work required under the Administrative Procedure Act and other Federal laws is, even for experienced agency lawyers, difficult and time-consuming work.

 

The November 14, 2018 notice of proposed rulemaking about hardship distributions set January 14, 2019 as the due date for comments.  Because the Treasury department then had a funding lapse through January 25, there have been only ten business days available for work on the comments.  (And for the three lawyers assigned, this rulemaking is not the only project.)

Peter Gulia PC

Fiduciary Guidance Counsel

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

215-732-1552

Peter@FiduciaryGuidanceCounsel.com

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The OP asks "is anything final?", and FGC is of course right, "no" is the answer.

But that doesn't mean there isn't something certainly to be done.  I see two tricky situations: 

  1. Operational choices that can be implemented now with reliance on the proposed regs; and
  2. Plan documentation trickiness if a plan chooses early implementation and then terminates.

There will be some pre-approved doc requirement but seems like the earliest that would be required would be filing deadline for 2019 years, even for the "optional" 2019 provisions.

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Agree with both Fiduciary Guidance Counsel and QP_Guy.   My firm has over 4000 DC clients, however,  and we have opted to wait until we get pre-approved language from our document providers to make or recommend amendments across the board.  We would, of course, be responsive to an individual request (have yet to hear from a client on this subject), but  to handle this in a cost effective way (and not drive the Consultants actually administering the plans crazy!), we will wait until we have the pre-approved language and then recommend amending to all of our clients.

Patricia Neal Jensen, JD

Vice President and Nonprofit Practice Leader

|Future Plan, an Ascensus Company

21031 Ventura Blvd., 12th Floor

Woodland Hills, CA 91364

E patricia.jensen@futureplan.com

P 949-325-6727

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  • 2 weeks later...

Would you all feel it odd to have a hardship distribution go to the TPA end of last week and the TPA come back with what I would call a "heavy handed" email about how now is the time to amend the plan to allowed the participant to take as much $ as possible (including earnings and employer money that is not currently allowed to be touched)?  My response is that we just amended the plan late 2018- for other reasons- and had to pass those amendments by the Finance Committee of our Board of Directors and I didn't see that I could get another amendment through that quickly to benefit this one employee's hardship need.  Then the TPA pushed again?!?

Are many of your clients already amending to allow for the relaxed law/rules?   And as consultants and TPAs are you suggesting to clients that they make an amendment quickly for this?  I just haven't heard much chatter and from my perspective, isnt' this still just proposed?

 

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