Where a multiemployer pension fund has already assessed partial withdrawal liability against an employer, what effect does a permanent closure of the business have on that liability? In other words, does the complete cessation of all covered work in the union's jurisdiction cure the partial withdrawal liability? Does it save the employer from triggering complete withdrawal liability going forward?

This is from another person in my office. Anyone know the answer?

Has anyone heard that ERPA’s with SSN ending in 7,8,or 9 have to renew by June 30, 2012? I haven’t gotten anything official from the IRS but I’ve seen comments posted on online groups I belong to. My ERPA card says it expires 9/30/2012 but I think that may be wrong.

After being married for thirty years, a wife asked her husband to describe her. He looked at her for a while...then said, "You're A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K.

> "She asks..... "What does that mean?"

> He said, "Adorable, Beautiful, Cute, Delightful, Elegant, Foxy, Gorgeous, Hot.

> She smiled happily and said.. "Oh, that's so lovely.. What about I, J, and K?"

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> He said, "I'm Just Kidding!"

> The swelling in his eye is going down and the doctor is fairly optimistic he will recover from his other injuries.

I have a client that plans to revoke his TEFRA 242(b) election in 2012. He will have a substantial amount of catch up distributions to take into income, so he plans to split it over the two year period. I am looking for information / references on how to calculate the final catch up amount that must be taken into income. I have tracked the delayed amounts every year, but does the catch up amount effectively freeze at 12/31/2011 if he is revoking in 2012, or does it continue to accrue (adjusted up or down based on earnings and actual distribuitons taken into income) through 2013?

Client fails to put an employee in the 401(k) plan in 2011 (misunderstanding of eligiblity). There was 1 full-time NHCE in the plan and deferring for many years. In 2011, however, this 1 NHCE didn't defer, so the ADP for the NHCE group is 0.00% for that year. If I'm reading EPCRS correctly, I use the ADP results for each year, so for the 2011 plan year, the corrective contribution would be $0.00. Sound right?

Are pre-tax assets from a qualified plan permitted to be rolled over to another institution into a Roth IRA? If so, is this a taxable event or non-taxable?

Meaning, the financial institution that rolled over the pre-tax assets to the other institution are they required to withhold taxes at the time of the rollover? or does the participant have to notify the IRS that they rolled over pre-tax assets from a qualified plan into a Roth IRA at another institution and pay the taxes?

For a 1/1/11 valuation with a PFB, what is the deadline to make a written election to use the PFB toward the MRC for 2011? Last year's funded ratio was greater than 80%.

Two questions concerning joint and several liability for potential withdrawal liability.

1. Am I reading Title IV correctly to say that joint and several liability applies only to members of a 414© group? In other words, if you have two entities that are not members of a 414© group, but they are (or may be) members of an ASG under 414(m) (because one of the entities performs management functions for the other), there is no joint and several liability?

2. Assume owners of a corporation set up another brother-sister corporation to acquire a business in the same field, and that new business will be involved with a multiemployer plan. Assume further that in setting up the new corporation - and PRIOR to the acquisition of that new business - the owners bring in an unrelated person to be a very small shareholder (e.g., 1%) with the result that there is no 80% common ownership. Assume further that it can be proven in court that there is no other significant purpose to inviting this unrelated person to the party other than to break the 80% common ownership. Is there any case law suggesting that this could be attacked as an attempt to "evade or avoid" withdrawal liability under Section 4212© if down the road there is withdrawal liability and the contributing corporation is insolvent and can't satisfy that liability?

I am working on Schedule A, Form 5500. The plan has a deferred variable annuity. From my research, the deferred variable annuity is an allocated contract. Therefore, do I complete only line 6 (parts a through f) of Part II and for type of contract check the other box and list it as a deferred variable annuity?

Thank you.

Need some guidance regarding what legal action can we take & if any experienced lawyer can be referred.

My business may be a victim of a great scheme where by the insurance company screwed us up on selling products under a defined benefit plan (VEBA).

1) There seems to be a pattern whereby trustee companies were changed a few times so as to make alot of stuff untraceable and create confusion.

2) There appears to be a conflict of interest on several fronts between the agents & trustees.

3) In one scenario with an insurance company, Large amounts were paid to the agents & consultants by the insurance company directly from the insurance account, thus impacting the goals of the policies.

4) Also, in another situation ( with a different insurance company) , Whole Life policies were bought , and funding was done for several years as indicated in illustration. For few years, there were dividend payments. Then the insurance company stopped paying the dividends that led to the policies to go into extended term. The insurance company does not respond as to why the dividends were not payed for several years as per the contract. Thus the employees were screwed up on cash values that were supposed to grow for the whole life policies.

Any feedback regarding help, guidance, & pointing to an experienced lawyer who can look into this matter is appreciated.

When a company exceeds 100 ee's, and there are two medical carriers in the medical plan, each with under 100 ee's, do they start to file 5500? for that matter, if they are now filing for one benefit, but another benefit has less than 100 ee's covered altogether, does that one file too? with growth projected to be slow, would they wait then before creating a wrapped plan or create one now and file all benefits, even though some have less than 100, even when adding up the different carriers?

I was just referred into a client that has had a SIMPLE IRA plan for years. They told the broker who "helped them" establish a new Safe Harbor 401(k) Plan effective 1/1/12 that there weren't any plan contributions to the SIMPLE during 2012. It now appears that one employee deferred about $500 and had an accompaying employer match. I know that the SIMPLE needs to be the exclusive plan, but since the new 401(k) has already been established, that is now a moot point.

Question:

Can the employee deferrals with income be returned to the employee and the employer matching contribution with income be returned to the employer?

If the ee/er contributions can be returned, will there be any problem operating the 401(k) Plan normally for the 2012 Plan Year?

Thanks for the help,

Rick

We have a client who has created a C Corp and companion PS Plan. It has placed rollover IRA assets in the plan and then used liquid assets to purchase company stock(approximately 20% of PS Plan assets)

The current plan does not provide guidance or insight in how to "unwind" this plan to allow for current owners to acquire stock without prohibited transaction violation.

Does anyone have any ideas on how this might be accomplished?

My only thought is using a triangular transaction with a disinterested third partgy, having a boa fide business purpose(i.e. 3rd party busies stock from plan and then enters into a buy-sell arrangement with original owners)

Thank you in advance for your input and comments

Wondering if someone could tell me the signifance of the word "received" in the 403(b)(3) definition of "includible compensation." Would it be to exclude income recognized under 457(f) but not paid to the employee?

Thanks,

Ken

Where employer stock is permissibly liquidated and segregated following a participant's termination of employment, can the employer transfer the cash investments to a 401(k) plan or must those funds be held in the ESOP, or must the participant consent (assume vested balance exceeds involuntary distribution threshhold)?

401(k) Safe Harbor Plan. Employee has participant directed salary deferral and safe harbor match accounts and an employer directed pooled account holding employer contributions. Due to a clerical error, the employee was overpaid from the ER account by $500. In his annual statement, his total account value is positive but the employer contribution account is -$500.

We are sure the employee would not agree to repay the $500. Could the money be repaid as a deduction from his pay? How about transferring $500 from his safe harbor match account to the pooled employer contribution account so that he would have a $0 balance in his employer account rather than a negative balance?

Looking at a 401k plan on Corbel's PPD format, and the only trustee listed is a nondiscretionary trustee. I thought that only a trust company could serve in this capacity. Can a 401k plan have a nondiscretionary trustee as the sole trustee? If so, it seems to me that I would have set all my plans up that way... I looked in the basic plan document and was not able to find anything that explicity prohibited this scenario.

The plan sponsor has an institutional shareholder who is reported on the sponsor's 10-K as owning more than 10% of the sponsor's outstanding common shares based upon its "beneficial" ownership of those shares as the manager of several mutual funds. The institutional shareholder does have sole voting and dispositive power with respect to those shares.

We are wrestling with the question of whether such beneficial ownership counts for purposes of determining whether the institutional shareholder is a party in interest under ERISA section 3(14)(H), as a 10% shareholder. There doesn't seem to be much, if any, authority addressing this topic. Has anyone dealt with this issue?

if a participating employer withdraws from a multiple employer 401(k) plan

and transfers the assets to another 401(k) plan that it sponsors, would this violate

the 12 month alternative defined contribution plan rule or could it be argued that

the employer did not terminate the multiple employer plan but only its participation in the

multiple employer plan?

Last year, and the plan sponsor received a QDRO for a participant, who also happened to be the owner. QDRO was adhered to but incurred some significant legal expenses in handling the QDRO, which was paid from the plan. the assets are pooled so everyone was affected by this expense.

The owner realizes now that wasn't really the best way to handle the expenses and wants to deposit the amount of the expenses into the plan from an employer account.

(1) Can the employer do this?

(2) if so, is it correct that the ER cannot make a deposit and treat it as an ER contribution for deductibility purposes (o/wise it woudl have to be allocated as an ER contribution)

(3) Can the ER deposit the amount into the plan and claim it as a business expense?

(4) If "No" to 2 and 3 above, can ER simply deposit the amount to make up for the expense and not take any expense/deduction for the deposit?

thanks