Credit to Nevin Adams of Plansponsor.com for this list:

- If you don’t speak up, people will assume you’re happy with the way things are.

- If you don’t love yourself, nobody else will.

- If you wouldn’t want your mother to learn about it, don’t do it.

- Paying the minimum due on your credit cards is dumb.

- High school ISN’T the best time in your life.

- Never miss a chance to tell someone “thank you.”

- You’ll fall in love more than once – or at least think you have.

- Never assume that your employer (or your boss) is looking out for your best interests.

- You can be liked AND respected.

- Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers – aren’t.

- Hug your parents – often.

- Know at least a little about sports and the weather.

- “What do you think?” is a great response when you don’t know the answer.

- The hardest thing to do is quit while you’re ahead.

- The second hardest thing to do is to keep your mouth shut.

- Never assume that “senior management” knows what they’re doing.

- “Have you been working out?” is the best thing you can say to someone. The second best is, “Have you lost weight?”

- People notice people that don’t swear.

- Breaking up IS hard to do.

- Listen.

- Smile.

- Read.

- That 401(k) match is not “free” money – but it doesn’t cost you anything.

- Start saving for retirement – now!

Random question - just read an article in a newsletter, and it said that as a benefit some employers were offering 401(k) debit cards. There was no further explanation. This was listed among traditional offerings such as 401(k) plans, DB plans, etc. I've never heard of this and was curious as to what it is!

Johnny works for Parent Co. Johnny leaves ParentCo to go work for ChinaCo, a 100% owned subsidiary of ParentCo. Is there an exception that would allow distribution of his 401k/SH balances because he has had a severance from employment with a US Company? Or must he sever all ties with anyone in the controlled group anywhere in the world?

I left a Company in 2009 and was due to receive a lump sum this year; 30 days before the lump sum was to be disbursed I received a notification that the plan was modified in 2010 to change the disbursement into installments. Can you really change the plan like that and affect out of service participants about to receive their lump sum disbursement?

If the plan is part of a controlled group during the year but by the end of the year they are no longer a member of the group, would the Control Group feature code still be used. I'm thinking it would apply if available at any time during the year, but maybe it is only what is available at plan year end?

Employer added 401(k) provisions to existing PSP several years ago. Thus, all in one plan document. Employer now says that it wants to terminate PSP portion of plan and allow participants to roll PSP monies out to IRA or take same as taxable distribution, but kep 401(k) intact. PSP monies are held in pooled account of which individual trustee oversees management. Individual trustee is also sole shareholder of employer and does not want that potential liability anymore. Thus, the termination of the PSP has been proposed by employer as an alternative. Plan document allows for participants to direct investment of all of their monies, eg, PSP, 401(k),... Participants are directed the investment of their 401(k) monies. Employer has basically notified participants that they will need to direct investment of all of their monies in the near future and has also notified them that they may be able to roll their PSP out to accommodate that. Is there any way to declare the PSP portion of the plan terminated such that participants can roll out their PSP balances? I guess what is getting me is that I had always learned that the 401(k) provisions needed to be part of a profit sharing plan and I can't grasp terminating one portion of the plan especially since all provisions are in one document. Please let me know what I am missing... Thanks.

I have what I think is a wrap plan, pop and self insured

claims paid through employer general assets, using administrative services of a tpa

do we have to have an independent audit done for the self insured (well over 100 participants)

thanks

A Participant in a SEP is eligible for a first year contribution of $3,000. It is a long story but I want to charge as much as $450 to look for him and if necessary set up an auto IRA.

Can anyone tell me if it is legal to take this fee of up to $450 out of his $3,000 contribution?

A client recently discovered an error involving the calculation of an employee's benefit under its NQDC plan. For example, an employee was paid 30,000 in 2008 (full account balance), but recently it was discovered that the employee should have received 30,200. Has anyone tried to correct this type of administrative error? 2008-113 limits corrections to 2 years. What is the penalty? Would this type of adminstrative error cause the employee to owe the 20% 409A tax on the entire 30,200?

Participant was rehired as an employee in 2008 but with no 401K eligibility. He never became a participant again in the plan, so he is technically still a "terminated" participant that is above the age of 70.5. The money deposited to his account in 2009 represents earnings due to an error in 2007. So, my question is this money still subject to an RMD? (as both cost basis and earnings are subject to RMDs).

Please note, Per client ppt was rehired on 12/08/2008 as a special contract dentist with no 401k eligibility.

What is the Federal tax withholding percentage for a non-spouse beneficiary death benefit to an estate? I thought a non spouse beneficiary to an estate could elect a lower Federal Withholding percentage than 20% since it's death benefit to an estate distribution not a normal rollover?

Please note that the Non-Spousal Bene would like to take a distribution from the account that was transfered from the deceased's account. The non-spouse beneficiary is the executor of the estate.

The participant wants to know definitively if she can withold a smaller percentage of federal witholding at 10% versus 20%

I work for a very small company in Ohio. We only have 9 employees. We have a high deductible insurance plan with an HSA, and we have 401k.

The company pays 100% of premiums for single insurance, but deducts a portion of the premium from payroll for family coverage.

I recently had to add my son to my coverage, which means that for the first time since I started here I have a payroll deduction for insurance coverage.

My insurance deduction is being taken POST TAX. The person who does our payroll tells me that this is because our company does not have a cafeteria plan. She is not a payroll person per-se, she set it up based on instructions from our payroll company and our insurance broker and I fear that she has been given inaccurate information.

What I don't understand is how I can have 401k deferrals taken out pre-tax, and HSA contributions taken out pre-tax, but my insurance has to be post-tax. CAN we have 401k and HSA without having a cafeteria plan?

I'm a Payroll Manager with 10+ years Payroll experience (benefits are NOT my strong suit though). My company does administrative work for other companies. So, while I'm paying 3000+ people for our customer companies, I don't do the payroll for the nine of us. I've never heard of medical insurance being post-tax, but then again I've never done payroll for a company as small as we are so I could be entirely wrong.

Any advice or direction toward documentation would be greatly appreciated.

Terrie

I have received direction from a client that seems a bit strange...

Plan A: was acquried in 2009 the participants began participating in Plan B on 2/20/2010. Plan A uses prior year..Plan B uses current year.

Client wants to test HCES under Plan A with full year comp/contribution using the prior year method. Plan thinks need to test full comp/contrib because of HCE aggregation rules. Of course that plan fails. Then they want to test HCEs from plan A using full year comp/contribs in Plan B's test, but only include Plan A's NHCEs from 2/20/10 through 12/31/10. The plan sponsor thinks that can't run one full year test because of the different testing methods. BTW, all assets from plan A were completely merged in prior to 12/31/10.

Is there any reason they can't just run 1 test for all of plan A & B as of 12/31/10?

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

A participant's account in a 403(b) plan contains only Roth contributions and wants a plan-to-plan transfer to purchase service credits in a DB plan. I can't find anything in the regs. stating that this is not permitted.

Unless the distributing or accepting plan does not permit the transfer of the Roth portion of a participant's account balance, I assume this is okay.

If the DB plan provides that it will only accepts transfers of taxable money, I assume only the earnings from the Roth account can be transferred.

Has anyone had this scenario come up? Thanks!!

Recently on another forum I encountered the following:

However, the bigger disappointment was figuring out that everytime I exchanged out of my original TRP fund (in a Roth IRA) into a new fund, TRP established a completely new Roth IRA for the second account. The second account was given a whole new start date for the purposes of the five years you must hold a Roth IRA. Before I figured out what they were doing, I had five different Roth IRAs in existence with them (because I exchanged out of the original fund into four other funds and kept the original open too) with the five year periods of the IRAs ending from early 2012 to late 2016. At Vanguard and Dodge Cox, you can exchange into a new fund and the new fund falls under the original Roth IRA "envelope" with the same date for the end of the 5 year period.

This sounds strange to me. As I understand it, an IRA is merely a container for investments. As long as one follows the contribution limits and doesn't violate the distribution rules, it's my understanding that one can trade within an IRA as often as one wishes. Further, I've never read or heard anything saying that trading from one fund to another within an IRA, Roth or otherwise, restarts the IRA holding period.

What am I missing here?

Client has a calendar year safe harbor 401(k) Plan and was scheduled to sell their ownership in the company and terminate the 401(k) plan on June 30th. This would be a plan termination due to a Section 410(b)(6)© transaction. At the last minute the sale was postponed until July 31st. The client would still like to use the June 30th plan termination date. My concern is whether or not they can continue to rely on the safe harbor rules for this plan year if the plan termination is 31 days in advance of the stock sale.

The question comes down to how long in advance of a stock sale (or asset sale) can you terminate a safe harbor 401(k) Plan and still rely on the safe harbor rules? A day, a week, a month? Any thoughts on this would be appreciated.

A client has both an HSA and an AFLAC hospital protection plan. Does anyone know if this plan conflicts with the HSA? It pays benefits for inpatient hospitalization, surgery and diagnostic testing.

When is the deadline for changing the look back month for segment rates? For example, the plan year is from July 1, 2010 to June 30, 2011 (the valuation date is June 30, 2011). We are using the June funding segment rates (no look back).

What is the deadline for the Plan Sponsor to make the election if he wants to change it to the first, second, third or fourth look back month? I understand that since this is a plan year beginning in 2010 that there is automatic approval but I couldn't find when the election had to be signed.

1) Lump SUm Distributions

My understanding is that 411(a)(13)(A) and regs provide that a cash balance plan can pay a lump sum equal to account balance and satisfy 417e without being required to project account to NRA, convert to annuity and determine PVAB using 417e segment rates or do whipsaw calculation.

So if a new cash bal plan designed properly the lump sum can be the account balance.

Agreed?

2) Projected account to compute Accrued Benefit

Accrued Benefit is annuity at NRA.

In order to project account balance if plan uses actual return on assets and return for year is:

a) less than 0 (i.e. negative) it is acceptable to project balance using a negative annual return until NRA, but for backloading testing you can use a future rate of 0.

b) say 10% (i.e. some high rate) then future interest credits to project balance to NRA would use 10% per year? And could result in an employee's AB exceeding the 415 limits if they were already at or close to the limits.

Agreed?

Thank you.