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Bill - everyone admires your comments. No need to know who because they speak for all of us!

We had a participant try that recently, but in a slightly different way. He requested the maximum hardship amount and provided a stack of medical bills as documentation. As we went through the bills, there were duplicate bills included in the stack. The bills had different dates, but were for the same amounts and the same service dates. We sorted through the bills, culled the duplicates and totaled up the amount actually owed and recommended to the sponsor that the hardship distribution amount not be allowed to exceed the total owed, grossed up for taxes. That seemed a pretty obvious course of action given the circumstances. I don't think you should have a different result just because the participant splits the duplicate bills into two separate hardship requests.

What are the circumstances involved in the making of the excess employer contribution. The IRS has suggested that only things like arithmetical or clerical errors constitute a mistake of fact for returning excess employer contributions. I don't think what a dumb client presumed or assumed matters. Just because their employer contribution exceeds the deductible limit, I do not believe that makes it a mistake of fact.

In the state of Louisiana the calculation is based on gross wages. In the determination of "wages" and the average weekly wage at the time of the accident, no amount shall be included for any benefit or form of compensation which is not taxable to an employee for federal income tax purposes; however, any amount withheld by the employer to fund any nontaxable or tax-deferred benefit provided by the employer and which was elected by the employee in lieu of taxable earnings shall be included in the calculation of the employee's wage and average weekly wage including but not limited to any amount withheld by the employer to fund any health insurance benefit provided by the employer and which was elected by the employee in lieu of taxable earnings shall be included in the calculation of the employee's wage and average weekly wage. Using your example in Louisiana the wage definition would include pre-tax benefits. Your state WC statute defines the calculation.

Gone but not forgotten.... Substitute "Morgan Stanley"....

Sage advice - as I said above, it may be "legal" but not a good idea to allow it - and not allowing it needs to be pursuant to set policy and documentation. By the way, it's discussions like this one - that point out something that most of us may not have experienced - that proves the value of this site and the community participating in it. As a result of this thread, we are reviewing our standard "hardship" policy we offer to our clients, and are revising it accordingly. Thanks all!

About the only difference I noticed was the heart icon with count of "likes" replaced the text box of "x people liked". Still doesn't list the names (like facebook).

I appreciate MoJo's position, as I too believe we need to concentrate more on "everyman" if we're ever going to make a dent in the retirement crisis is America. However, this program was never a good idea & there's plenty of places to put your money these days. Betterment.com will open an IRA with no minimum, set up recurring deposits for you, do all your trading & tax reporting, etc., all for .25%. I opened an account with them about 6 months ago as a little experiment, so I could speak intelligently to the Participants who call me every day & it's up 6.5% as of today--I don't ever have to touch it, they do everything. There's a few others using this same model & most of the big names in the industry are currently launching similar products. The gov't has plenty of unfinished business to attend to, they should start there.