New plan with a past service liability and accelerated payment provision effective 1/1/2012, adopted 12/30/2012. No 436 contribution being made.

When is the 101(j) Notice due - looks like 30 days from 12/30/2012. Anybody disagree?

the plan document defines pay as W-2 less

All fringe benefits, expense reimbursements, deferred compensation, and

welfare benefits are excluded

The company allows active employees to cash out unsused paid time off.

They consider this a fringe benefit and want to exclude from plan pay.

Is this correct?

They also have a program where others can donate PTO to others and they also consider this a fringe benefit and not plan pay to the recipient of the PTO.

I am having a hard time finding guidance. Any comments would be greatly appreciated

The regs say a payment will still be treated as being paid on the designated payment date if paid the later of (1) the end of the year of the designated payment date, or (2) the 15th day of the 3rd month following the payment date.

Focusing on (2) above, say a payment is due 12/31/2012. Payment is still treated as paid on the payment date if paid on, say, 2/5/2013.

Question: Should this be treated as taxable income on 12/31/2012 (the date the payment is treated as being paid under 409A) or on 2/5/2013 (the date actually paid)?

I attended a seminar quite some time ago on 403(b) plans and recall the speaker saying that if the employer (in this case a college) maintains an ERISA and a non-ERISA plan, it is likely that the non-ERISA plan will automatically be subject to ERISA due to the existence of the ERISA plan. However, it didn't sound at the time like this was a rule written in stone. It was phrased similar to "it's been speculated that....." In the meantime, the plan has continued operating as a non-ERISA plan. Is there some definitive source that would tell me if indeed the presence of the ERISA plan has "tainted" the other plan and caused it to inadvertently become an ERISA plan? I hesitate to think about the can of worms this might open, such as having to file several years' worth of 5500s, etc.

Members take draws out during the course of the year, can they defer on those draws or wait until after the close of the plan year to defer pending preparation of their k-1's or both?

I've been looking through the BNA portfolio on ESOPs to see if there's any mention about an ESOP owning life insurance on a Key EE, but so far no luck. Does anyone have any experience with this?

In the latest issuance of its determination letter Rev Proc (Rev Proc 2013-6, Section 7.05), the Service appears to have eliminated the option that has existed for quite a few years now to submit a working copy of a plan restatement rather than the finalized and executed restatement (see, e.g. Rev Proc 2012-6, Section 7.05).

Rev Proc 2013-6 says that its effective date is February 1, 2013, so apparently the last few Cycle B submissions that will go in before the end of January willl not be affected by the change.

The ability was one of the more user friendly aspects of the determination letter program. For one thing, you could build whatever changes the IRS might request into the restated document before it is adopted and without having to draft and adopt an add on amendment to the newly restated plan.

I just don't see the logic - has anyone seen or heard anything as to the rationale for this change?

Or am I missing something here? - I went around with an IRS specialist on an application last year over whether my "working copy" was a "draft" or a "working copy," which largely struck me as a distinction without a difference.

Any comments or other input would be appreciated!

Rumors are that DOL is auditing H&W plans for compliance with a myriad of issues (including early health care reform items already effective) and I would be very interested in seeing the lsit of documents they're requesting be produced for the audit.

If anyone has a copy of the audit letter/document list they wouldn't mind sharing (with client data redacted) I would very much appreciate a copy being posted on this site or emailed to me at jmpeterson@kaufcan.com

Thanks

For those of you conversant on contributory DB plans, when an lump sum option exists on the both the employee and employer portion of the accrued benefit, does the accrued benefit portion that is derived from the employee contributions have to be present valued on 417(e) rates too (obviously not less than the contributions with interest) for the lump sum distribution ? or can it be a lump sum where the employee derived portion of the accrued benefit is paid as a lump sum as a refund of the employees contributions (with interest) only and then only the employer portion of the accrued benefit is present valued on 417(e).

For example:

1. ER paid accrued benefit present value on 417(e) plus EE dervied AB paid as refund w/interest of contributions = Total Lump Sum

-OR-

2. Entire accrued benefit if paid as a lump sum is subject to 417(e) but never less than the employee contributions w/interest (120% of federal mid-term rate interest).

Is example 1 above even an option ? I know there are situations where a refund of employee contributions can forfeit the entire benefit (subect to restoration rules) but I'm just talking about a standard termination of employment where a lump sum of the employer provided benefit is also available.

Given the many regular communications that a retirement plan must send to participants, administrators are looking for opportunities to reduce the number of mailings - to get efficiences on the number of assemblies, and sometimes about incremental postage. (My query is about plans that can't meet the conditions for using e-mail as the exclusive or dominant form for sending a communication.)

Do you think it makes sense to combine some communications for mailing efficiency?

Would you combine ERISA 404a-5 information with some other notice so that both can go in the same envelope?

If so, what other notices or communications are the logical candidates for that efficiency?

In what ways do you manage cycles and timelines to make it feasible to combine communications for mailing efficiency?

Does it make sense to delay a change in a plan's investment alternatives so that the announcement of the change can be related to a regularly scheduled 404a-5 mailing?

In what situation would putting different communications into one mailing introduce a diseffeciency?

In what situation would putting different communications into one mailing result in confusing participants and incurring expenses of responding to them that exceed the expense-savings of the mailing efficiency?

Other practical suggestions?

distribution must occur to the estate as per the plan document. however if attorney establishes via probate where the money will end up, can a check be made payable directly to that person as opposed to the estate which would be more efficient?

A former employee owes premiums for December & January. He sent in premiums for one month, but still owes for January. He wants to be retroactively enrolled for December only. Can we do this? I thought we had to wait until all COBRA premiums in arrears were paid to re-enroll him.

Deleted. Thank you.

As we get better and better at tracking late deferrals and loan repayments, and better at notifiying plan sponsors about those late deposits, the corrections (interest on late deposits) get smaller and smaller. For instance, deposits that we determine to be one day late can result in interest adjustments of less than one dollar. Anyone have thoughts on setting de minimis amounts for corrections?

On a separate note, we have already determined that we will not recommend filing a 5330 if the penalty is less than $1.

Well, I'm a QPA now. (pauses until applause simmers down)

The next logical step is CPC.

My question is on the modules.

ASPPA has a "deal" on the 4 core modules: $405 for the 4 core modules. The thing is, they "expire" at the end of June.

Any ideas if completing the 4 in that time is feasible? I'm not sure of the depth and breadth of the topics.

For the modules, at least, do I have to LEARN the material? Or is it sufficient to be a competent researcher? And when researching, what's the scope of the questions?

Website says 5-20 hours of study. Is that reasonable?

Your thoughts are appreciated.

is there any way to make the contribution once the deadline for filing the return plus extensions passes? was wondering if they could amend their return for that tax year and make the contribution?

I am working on a one-man DB plan. The participant's date of birth is 7/29/1948. Therefore, at 1/1/2013, the participant is 64.427 years old. His high-3 comp is $200,000, which is less than the dollar limit of $205,000. He has over 10 years of service and compensation. For the lump sum using statutory assumptions (5.5% and 2013 AMT), I am getting a limit of $2,376,153.55 for a 64 year old (using N64(12)/D64) and a limit of $2,320,292.40 for a 65 year old (using N65(12)/D65) and interpolate to get a 1/1/2013 limit of $2,352,343,54.

Does anyone have any ideas of how I can get the limit to be any higher?

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Thanks!

One person Plan defaulted on his loan. In reading Rev Proc 2008-50 it seems it can be corrected either by making a one time payment to catch it up, or reamortizing the loan over the remainign life of the original loan. Are either or both of these approaches considered eligible for the Self Corection program (SCP)? or do you have to go through VCP to make either one of these fixes?

have a plan where compensation only excludes pre-participation wages from the plan for all sources. if the company has an employee on short term disibilty and the participant gets paid from an outside agency but this compensation is included and added to their w-2 for the year, should the short term disability compensation be included in the plan compensation for calculating employer contributions for the year or should we only include compensation that was actually paid by the company?

My 90 year old client has 4 different IRA's. WE have been doing his RMD calculations.

One of his IRA's is a fixed annuity that cannot be retained any longer due to his age.

We may therefore settle this contract on a 5 year period certain payout in March.

How do we factor this into his future RMD calcluations since this really has no present "value" on December 31, 2013 ?

Do we simple disregard this and calculate on his other three accounts as usual ?

Thank you.