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I miss the "good ol' days" when we could call Jacksonville and get an answer in 5 mins. From people who actually used the software. Not some guy in the programming department.

In my two decades of working on primarily qualified DC plans (and a fair share of DB), I have NEVER had a participant in a regular qualified defined contribution plan elect an annuity. Thousands of plans, even more thousands of participants, not one. Most DC plans do not even allow annuity distributions, SECURE 1.0 and 2.0 does not override that. So I think your fear that a participant will elect an annuity from their DC (such as 401(k), 401(a), 403(b), money purchase etc), and then later a lump sum DRO is approved by the plan administrator as a QDRO - is unfounded. Keep in mind that the DRO is not Qualified until the plan says it is. Entering it into the court does not make it qualified. If the plan administrator receives a DRO that they cannot accept because the form of benefit or level of benefit is not available, perhaps because the participant already did something, the DRO will get rejected. Perhaps I misunderstood your concern, if so, I apologize. I hope others can chime in as well.

When I first started working at a TPA/Recordkeeper a couple months ago I was so frustrated with the terrible layout of the software and lack of documentation, and I refused to just take "I'm not sure how to do it so I'll do it manually" as an answer, so in my first two or three months I opened I think about 50-60 tickets asking for documentation 😂. It actually got so bad they have my tickets being automatically forwarded from their "off-shores" team directly to two of their head support members here in the states because my questions are always too in-depth for the offshores people. Those two have been great to work with; it's such a shame they have people who know the system but route most people to the team that knows how to copy-and-paste from manuals they don't understand.

The formality of how they look is definitely a plus for the IDPs, but I prefer them for the table of contents that they usually have - we've taken over a lot of plans that use prototypes and I don't think I've ever seen one whose adoption agreement has a TOC. I have to think there must be some that have them, as that feature would be no-brainer, especially since some adoption agreements are now 40+ pages long, but we have yet to encounter one. In a prototype doc, if you want to delve into a provision past its most basic parameters you would have to refer to two documents, the adoption agreement and the basic plan document that it would reference (which is like an IDP), so an instance like that would make the IDP easier to use IMO.

I will tell you I spoke to the team at ASC about their software and was very impressed. I would give them a look. My issue with Relius has really been on the service side. Many of you likely remember the "goo old days" where you would submit an incident and some incredible relius genius would call you back, do screen sharing, take control and fix whatever was wrong. IT was a sight to behold. personally I am very reliant on Crystal Reports. I have done a ton of custom reports. I don;t think any other packages are as flexible in that category. Definitely a big advantage for Relius for me. Are people aware that within 5 years Relius will no longer exist as thy are phasing it out?

Datair, FT Williams and ASC do not have a recordkeeping platform, so they won't be of any help for your recordkeeping needs. We used to do the plan testing in Datair and the recordkeeping in Relius. However, that got cost prohibitive and we ended up moving everything to Relius. No matter what we do as recordkeepers, it is going to get a lot more expensive to stay in this industry as an independent recordkeeper in the next few years.

Oy! My head hurts!

A plan might have several distinct definitions of compensation measured for different purposes. Are you asking about: benefit-accrual compensation? nondiscrimination-testing compensation? annual-additions-limit compensation? Among some of many questions one might need to answer to develop relevant facts: Which of the three partnerships is or are participating employers? For which of the three partnerships did the partner perform personal services? For which of those was the partner’s services a material income-producing factor? Regarding each partnership, how much of the net income from it is attributable to capital, and how much to the partner’s personal services? Regarding each partnership, does the partner own more than 10% of the capital interests, or of the profits interests? Does each partnership have the same tax year as the others? Is the plan’s limitation year the same as or different than a partnership’s tax year? Is the plan’s limitation year the same as or different than the partner’s tax year? Is one or more of the partnerships not a US organization Consider Internal Revenue Code of 1986 § 401(d): “A trust forming part of a pension or profit-sharing plan which provides contributions or benefits for employees some or all of whom are owner-employees shall constitute a qualified trust under this section only if, in addition to meeting the requirements of subsection (a), the plan provides that contributions on behalf of any owner-employee may be made only with respect to the earned income of such owner-employee which is derived from the trade or business with respect to which such plan is established. And consider this rule: “If a self-employed individual is engaged in more than one trade or business, each such trade or business shall be considered a separate employer for purposes of applying the provisions of sections 401 through 404 to such individual. Thus, if a qualified plan is established for one trade or business but not the others, the individual will be considered an employee only if he received earned income with respect to such trade or business and only the amount of such earned income derived from that trade or business shall be taken into account for purposes of the qualified plan.” 26 C.F.R. § 1.401-10(b)(2) https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-26/part-1/section-1.401-10#p-1.401-10(b)(2). As always, Read The Fabulous Document. This is not advice to anyone.

If I'm understanding correctly, the question is this: Say a plan provides that the normal retirement date is the later of attainment of age 65, or the 5th anniversary of the first day of the year in which the participant commenced participation in the plan. Is the "year" in this case the plan year, calendar year, participant's anniversary year, or something else? Kent has obliquely observed that the "year" for this purpose is not defined in the IRS regulations or other guidance. However, regulations relating to computation periods for purposes of IRC sections 410 and 411 (as well as ERISA 202, 203 and 204) are under the authority of the DOL. DOL reg 2530.200b-1 notes that "Under sections 202, 203 and 204 of the Act and sections 410 and 411 of the Code, an employee's statutory entitlements with regard to participation, vesting and benefit accrual are generally determined by reference to years of service and years of participation completed by the employee and one-year breaks in service incurred by the employee." I note the use of the word "generally" because in this instance, the employee's right to vesting is not based on the hours definitions of years of service or participation. However a computation period still applies, because the 5 year period must be measured somehow. DOL reg 2530.203-2 defines the computation period for vesting purposes, i.e. for purposes of ERISA 203 and IRC 411. Paragraph (a) reads: From this I would conclude that whichever 12-month period the plan designates as the vesting computation period would also be the "year" used to measure the 5th anniversary of participation for determining the normal retirement date. Kent, if this analysis was helpful to you at all, I would love to get a verbose thank-you note written in your signature flowery and archaic style! It would really make my day.