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Good evening, I am an American Translators Association English to Spanish certified translator. I have worked many years in HR both in the US and in Mexico/Latin America and I am familiar with the cultural and legal practices in both areas. I support companies who need to reach their Spanish-speaking employees with versions of their communications in Spanish. The documents include SPDs, Employee Guidebooks, Union Contracts, Open Enrollment communications, Safety Manuals and similar. If you think I can be of help with your needs, please contact me through this forum and we can discuss more in detail. Thanks.

The hardship wasn't two years ago, it is still ongoing. Under safe harbor rules, its expenses for or necessary to obtain medial care. The expense still exists. 5 or so years ago, we took this a step further and asked a IRS panel the following: If a participant financed the medical care via credit card or medical loan service, is there still an eligible hardship (since they were able pay for it through other means)? Panel said yes, it was the expense of the medical care that triggered the hardship. Taking a hardship distribution to pay a credit card used to pay for medical care was still a hardship within the safe harbor rules.

Completely agree - my particular situation doesn't square exactly. My takeaway was they were very clear that the increase in benefits must be for every single participant, not just bring a subset of "disadvantaged" participants up to the same level as a subset of "advantaged" participants. Personally, I would probably recommend SCP, document the reasoning, and move on, but others may be more conservative based on the size of plan, client preferences, etc.

You can do a window - discrimination is looked at separately with respect to current employees and former employees, so no problem offering only to current employees. You can offer lump sum to retirees in pay status provide it is non-discriminatory with respect to that group, and so limiting to (former) NHCEs even if top-25 restrictions are not in play would be OK as well. I would suggest not adding a general lump sum option and, outside of any window, only allow lump sums upon termination. But LSWs in advance of a plan termination is not w/o its drawbacks. The counts you give are small - is that just for example purposes or is this a relatively small plan? Because if you offer a lump sum window, and also offer to retirees, and are left with a small in pay status group for which to purchase annuities, you could have a very difficult task in finding an insurer to underwrite and likely incur a sizeable negative selection premium as well. If you have a reasonable retiree liability, that is what attracts the insurer and helps ensure they'll write the deferreds as well. Insurers love immediate annuities, do not like deferred annuities (from plans), and hate plans with general lump sum options. Anything the sponsor can do to maintain the former while avoiding the latter as much as possible will improve their plan termination annuity purchase experience (willing providers and pricing). A good broker (we use Brentwood) can advise you all on that and (this is the mistake often made by not doing) should be consulted now rather than waiting until the formal termination process begins. If your plan is small, if it looks like you may be able to entice everyone, actives/deferreds/retirees, to take a lump sum, that would be your best outcome but it's a risky proposition if you're left with just a couple of annuities and a killer if any are deferred.

If you are filing 5500-SF you do not need to attach Schedule D.

EBECatty--Thanks, that's helpful. Devil's advocate, in your case, it's not possible (or practical) to increase loan provisions in operation because not everyone had taken (or would take) a loan out. And when you think about EPCRS going back to the beginning and I was around then----there is no disadvantaged participant here (but there is a failure to properly follow the plan's terms). In fact, only advantaged participants; and I thought SCP's purpose was to clear up more ministerial, less consequential errors that are not practical for VCP to address. Bottom line: What would you do if this were your plan ? Sounds like you might do the VCP. Thanks much.

Thanks so much, Bill!

1. Yes 2. No

But what if was a large bill that had say a 5 year payment plan. At the beginning of the payments he was not eligible for hardship because he has savings. Over the next two years he exhausts his savings paying off the first 2 years medical debt. Now he has no savings and is living paycheck to paycheck but still has the medical debt payments and no savings left to cover it. Or is married, with the spouse's income they can make the payments but spouse loses job and they can no longer afford the medical debt payment. Under both scenarios the participant now has an "Immediate and Heavy Financial Need"

We have used a local high school Spanish teacher for translation services for many things. We use the built in translator in word for a bulk of the translation and then have the Spanish teacher clean it up from there. We contract the service by the hour. You could contact a local high school, college or a tutor and probably find someone who would be willing to freelance and do translations. Relius does provide their website, app and VRU in Spanish, but we have not seen it with their plan document software.