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Form 5500-EZ is solely within the jurisdiction of the IRS, so the DOL will not come asking about it (and if they do, you can politely tell them to take a hike). However, this means that if the IRS assesses penalties on a late 5500-EZ then it is too late to apply for relief.

Are you asking who makes the final decision, or who decides for the company whether to treat an error as properly corrected? The second question is a practical matter that every company will have to resolve for itself. With respect to the first question, the IRS would generally be the final arbiter of whether self-correction was properly completed if/when they happen to notice the issues on audit. In theory, there could be a fiduciary or ERISA breach underlying just about any operational or documentary failure, which would need to be separately corrected to the extent possible under DOL procedures (which are rather lacking in this regard). The DOL could determine that a self-correction was insufficient under IRS procedures and therefore give it no credit with respect to the underlying ERISA/fiduciary breaches (to the extent that it would receive credit in the first place), and thus impose further penalties. There could also be a participant lawsuit, but that would generally be grounded on Title 29 ERISA violations, not on breaches of the tax code, and in any event, EPCRS corrections technically offer no protection against participant lawsuits (except, perhaps, to the extent that the participant has been substantively made whole as part of the correction) regardless of whether the correction complied with EPCRS.

I always recommend using the relief programs provided.

While the start-up credit isn’t available, the automatic enrollment credit is in IRC 45T and it does not include the requirement that the plan cover at least one NHCE.

Bri, this may be as good a time as any to start what will likely be a long-running debate on whether VCP will be the rare exception going forward, replaced almost entirely by SCP, in light of SECURE 2.0 Sec. 305, which seems to be effective on enactment.

Also, if it's a defined benefit plan (DBP), where a valuation needs to be done to determine the contribution that will be deposited by that tax return due date, you'll want to get the document done and signed far enough in advance. I recommend anyone considering a DBP retroactive to 2022 to put their tax return on extension for the extra time but make the decision and get the document done in the first or second quarter of 2023.

If possible, the should put "severance pay" in the memo line for the check, certainly not "bonus" or "special pay."