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I don't think you can disaggregate otherwise excludable employees on any basis other than the maximum age and service conditions of 410(a). Your disaggregated plans for deferrals will be those with less than 1 year of service (ADP test required), and those with more than 1 year of service (safe harbor). For match your disaggregated plans will be those with more than 3 months but less than 1 year of service (ACP test required), and those with more than 1 year of service (safe harbor).

I fired up Tom's COLA spreadsheet to see where we might be headed for 2022. Using the May 2021 CPI-U, which was 269.195, based on Tom's spreadsheet, and if we have exactly 0% inflation in the CPI-U from June 1, 2021 to September 30, 2021, Perhaps the 2022 limits might be: Deferral limit: $20,500 (2021 is $19,500) Compensation Limit: $300,000 (2021 is $290,000) DC Annual Addition Limit: $60,000 (2021 is $58,000) DB Benefit Limit: $240,000 (2021 is $230,000) Key Employee: $195,000 (2021 is $185,000) HCE: $135,000 (2021 is $130,000) Unchanged: Catchup Limit: $6,500

Different parts of the plan can have different eligibility conditions. It can create some of the issues you discus in your original post. But if someone wanted to they could have something crazy like immediate eligibility for deferral, 3 month eligibility for safe harbor match, 6 month eligibility for non safe harbor match and 1 year of service for profit sharing. As long as the document was drafted correctly. I mean I'm not sure the added complexity would be worth it but if you aren't top-heavy and don't have owners with less than a year of service it's likely to pass all discrimination tests without a problem. There are some issues if you have a very high paid employee who becomes an HCE the 2nd year because they made over the limit in just a couple of months, you hire someone who immediately is a more than 5% owner in the first year (usually an owner's kid or spouse). But generally speaking everyone in your under 1 year of service group is going to be all NHCEs which will automatically pass for that group. If you are top-heavy, you'll lose the "deemed not-top-heavy" exemption with this kind of design so probably not ideal in the very small plan market in most cases.

Following Revenue Ruling 2014-9, 2014-17 Internal Revenue Bulletin 975 (April 21, 2014), it’s feasible to “reasonably conclude that a potential rollover contribution is a valid rollover contribution” without looking to an IRS letter. https://www.irs.gov/irb/2014-17_IRB#RR-2014-9 And the IRS’s website explanation includes this: “It’s not necessary to obtain a letter from the distributing plan when its qualified status can be checked using the online Department of Labor filing search.” https://www.irs.gov/retirement-plans/verifying-rollover-contributions-to-plans For most § 401(a)-(k) and § 403(b) plans, one looks to Form 5500 data. If the paying plan’s most recent Form 5500 shows any characteristics code that begins with “1” or “2” and does not show code 3C, treat the paying plan as an eligible retirement plan. If an investment or service provider uses a database repackaged from Form 5500 reports, this look-up can be automated. You described a situation about an IRA, which one imagines might not be ERISA-governed. For an employment-based retirement plan, it’s feasible for a service provider to use such a method with no discretion; instead, a plan’s administrator would instruct its service provider to follow a written procedure the plan administrator approves. I don’t know which of the investment and service providers uses such a method. A custodian for a truly individual IRA should be willing to accept good-enough evidence that a rollover contribution is from an eligible retirement plan; if it’s not, the error harms no one but the IRA holder.

Rev. Rul. 2014-9 allows receiving plan administrators to check the distributing plan's Form 5500. As long as Code 3C (plan not intended to be qualified) is not listed on the distributing plan's 5500, the plan administrator of the receiving plan can reasonably conclude the rollover is valid and comes from a qualified plan (absent evidence to the contrary). By its terms, the revenue ruling only applies to plan administrators of receiving plans that are qualified under section 401(a), but I think the same logic could apply to an IRA custodian receiving a rollover from a qualified plan.

The accountant is wrong, given the facts as you presented them.

Not to mention a 5-year waiting period Which violates everything under the sun.

If you give the employee the choice to receive the amount in cash, or have it contributed to the plan, that's a CODA.

Construction for Primary Residence Ruling.pdf

Documentation of Principal Residence Loan.pdf

Why do you have concerns about sending out a copy of the advisory letter? It's kind of public information isn't it?

Somewhere along the line, somebody added him to the SSA (now Form 8955-SSA) and didn't remove him when the account was paid out. The $49k was the value of his account when the sponsor (or, really the TPA or R/K) added him tot he SSA way back when...

Form 8955-SSA. It was called something else once upon a time but that's the current form to report terminated employees with deferred vested benefits. When participant applies for Social Security they get that notice if they were reported to SSA unless they were later removed. But in my experience it's been hit or miss that they actually get removed when you report code D. maybe it's got better in recent years but the old days it seemed like over half the folks who were "removed" still got the letter.

Depends on the function. As noted in this thread, it's hard to find experienced talent, meaning "replaceable" but not easily or immediately.... I have a member of my team retiring next March, and we've already begun the search, because finding an expert on ESOPs and taxes is not easy.....

Ahhhh, the good old days. Problem is, the work does NOT stop when you are on vacation, over the weekends, or in the evenings. Choose your poison - check your phone a couple of times and get rid of the chaff, and deal with the low hanging fruit, or return to the office and see 6025 emails in your inbox (and, that is exactly the number in my inbox currently, and I've only taken 1 day off so far this year). This thing called retirement is looking better and better every day and every email incoming..... And for the record - EVERYONE *is* that important. Just lose one of them and see how important they are.

Many job lists exist including the IFEBP- International Foundation of Employee Benefit Plans and SPARK which might be helpful.

This isn't limited to the employee benefits. CPA firms are having a very hard time finding applicants to fill vacancies, especially as you get to manager level. It is for a variety of reasons, but quality of life or work/life balance seems to be towards the top. Many applicants are just not willing to take on the heavy workloads anymore, and this is especially true you do not offer work from home to offset some of that time. The major CPA firms have started to increase pay and benefits to attract new applicants and folks who previously left the industry for something else. I would assume that we can apply the same issues to our corner of the industry.

Might not be the most cost-effective to you, but I got two of my former positions via a recruiter.