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You could word the amendment to grandfather in the union employees, but if you do that make sure it is OK with the CBA as well as the OK with the Plan Sponsor. Allowing union employees to participate but not others could be a big no-no with the union that collectively bargains benefits for its members. I believe it is "typical" to exclude the union employees both existing and prospective when such an amendment is executed. Though I could be wrong as my experience with union employees in or out of plans is limited.

You’re welcome - now think about taking that trip to Tahiti

We do our 5500s on an accrual basis, so the 2017 contribution goes on the 2017 5500 no matter when it was made. The bigger question is why is anyone on here on a weekend??? That's awful!!!

Interesting, I always thought modified accrual, for plan purposes, was simply cash basis for everything except accrual basis for contributions. I guess that's what the more complicated description above boils down to. Anyway, we almost always use that (modified accrual). The benefit is that your plan tax return contribution ties in with your business return deduction, and it provides an aid in reconciling. The downside is that it takes longer to complete since the contribution may not be known for many months. It seems that the large bundled service providers tend to use cash, since in theory you can push a button on Jan 1 and complete the financials and not have the messiness of waiting for contributions to be determined.

Not you, the person who suggested it in the first place, which you are rightly questioning.

Here's the recent article describing Abbot's program. It was actually covered in the NY Times. It is simply a contribution to the participant's account BASED on some function of his student loan repayment, verified by an outside firm. Not all that creative; as long as the participant's are NHCEs it will work very well. If you put each employee in his/her own rate group, then you don't even need special language in the plan to make it happen. Hope this helps. Abbott Uses 401(k) Matching as Incentive for Student Loan Payments https://www.cebglobal.com/talentdaily/abbott-uses-401k-matching-as-incentive-for-student-loan-payments/

If the plan actually says a person doesn't forfeit until they have 5 BIS that is how the plan needs to operate. That is one of the fundamental rules of this business. You operate according to the document. So in my mind if it says a person doesn't forfeit until 5 BIS you keep the shares in the person's account until they have 5 BIS. Yes, you can shorten the time at least going forward. I would have to think about people who termed in the past. We have plenty of ESOPs that say you forfeit upon full payment or 1 BIS. You just have to restore people's balances under some conditions. If it is possible for a person to have a balance and be 0% vested look for a deemed distribution provision that says such a person is deemed to be fully distributions upon termination. This would allow you to forfeit that person in the year of termination but would need to be restored if rehired within a given time period. The conditions of when a restore happens and and if you restore to the dollar amount forfeited in the past or shares (in effect giving them gains/losses on the shares) will be spelled out in the document. Most ESOPs say without earnings. So if the person had 100 shares with $1,000 that were forfeited and the price has doubled you would restore 50 shares giving a $1,000 balance restored. But it could say restore the 100 shares for a restored value of $2,000 in my example. A word of advice from an old DC/ESOP person. The guy who trained me in this business had one hard rule you had to obey. You couldn't come into his office with a question without the document in your hand. You better have tried to find the answer in that document. If you came into his office without the document he would tell you to turn around and try and again and nothing else. The ERISA Outline Book is great, this forum is great but 99% of your questions on how a plan ought to operate can be found in the document. Obviously, questions like can we change a document to say this or that isn't there but how it ought to work is there 99% of the time. If you want to excel in this business learn to read documents. Once again the document should answer when all of your questions regarding this topic at least in terms of how it ought to be operating now. The plan has to have those answers so they are there for these questions.

Please don't overlook this piece of advice.

It's not a fringe benefit; the employer is paying a personal expense of the employee and it should be included in W-2 and withholding and SS taxes are applicable.

Yes, I am the one that originally figured this all out when the law changed and taught the world and all the software vendors how to do the calculations. Ultimately, the software of most of the vendors now provides all you need, but my outline still shows you why and how you have to do this and why you absolutely cannot depend on anyone else to give you the correct numbers. If anyone sends me their email address and asks for my self-employed calculations outline, I'll be happy to send along the most current version of it. Send your email to larrystarr@qpc-inc.com.