Employee with FSA no longer living with spouse - has filed for divorce, however, with court dates and whatnot, probably will not be finaled until about march or april of 2006. If letter from the lawyer stating that divorce has been filed can that be considered change in status?

Employee is having financial difficulty. Employer is willing to terminate the employee so that he can receive a full distribution from his 401(k) and then rehire.

What are the risks?

Plan document says forfeitures are used to reduce company contributions. However, that is not workable in a leveraged ESOP with almost no cash available to buy the forfeited shares from the participants. We are thinking of reallocating, however there is no authority for that in the document. The other option is to amend, but there might be some retroactive amendment issues. I would appreciate any suggestions.

Searched for an answer on this but the responses didn't necessarily related to my situation.

New employee eligible to enter plan on 8/1. EE completes salary reduction form and is enrolled in the plan. Due to mixup by payroll dept. in notifying payroll processing company about new deduction this employee did not have 401k deducted for 2 August payrolls. Going forward they are setup correctly.

Since this was due to an administrative oversight (mis-communication) we are allowing the ee to 'make-up' the missed deductions. Is a suitable correction method just to allow the employee to double up the missed deductions and have that withheld from the upcoming paycheck?

Does anyone know of a company specializing in assistance to employers/sponsors with qualified retirement plan distributions? I'm not looking for a TPA, I was thinking of a company that would be more specialized.

A new client to me, has a 403b plan and 401k plan. I haven't yet received the actual plan document for the 4k and I presume the 403b is salary reduction only based on their tax exempt status. My questions are what is the benefit to offer the two plans and are there any circumstances where these two plans are combined for testing purposes and/or contribution limits, other than 402g?

I have a client with an on-site health center that provides emergency care and treatment of minor illnesses and injuries. Can this client offer an HSA to its employees?

Does anyone know if the new 403(b) regs will affect 501©(3)'s in the same way? Thanks!

May a charity be named as the beneficiary of a qualified plan? Does it make any difference if it is a charitable trust?

I have been reviewing the NAIC model law for quite sometime trying to determine the length of time a signature is valid. For instance, with a 403(b) transfer an application and transfer paperwork is signed on 1-1-05 at what point can you not accept those funds? Does this differ based on product? I know 403(b) life plans no longer exist, but if they did how far out could the effective date be from the signature date?

If anyone has the website with these guidelines I would greatly appreciate it if you pasted the link.

When you have a control group do you test each plan separately for the ADP/ACP or are they aggregated?

I seem to recall that there were limits as to the amounrt of benefits that could be reimbursed under a Medical Expense Reimbursement Account. I recall that these amounts were either $50,000 or 15% of compensation. Additionally, where in the Code are these amounts set out? Any assistence would be appreciated. Thanks. Ed

An employer uses a VEBA as a funding vehicle for its health plan. The employer wants to keep the health plan in place but terminate the VEBA. Other than following the termination procedures in the VEBA trust document, using the remaining assets to pay health benefits and filing a final 5500, is there anything else that should be done?

I just received some Schedule A information that includes a page of "Supplemental Compensation Data".

Certain amounts ("additional compensation paid") are provided for non-cash compensation, incentive plan payouts, and other items allocated to the policy and attributed to a broker and/or agent.

Is anyone familiar? My initial thought is that "additional compensation paid" is just something extra to report on Schedule A, Line 2. But, the amounts are neither commissions nor fees, so they don't fit neatly into the form. Any thoughts?

I have just gotten a new client that has two 403(b) plans and two 401(a) plans. They are having a law firm draft the documents and when I asked if the law firm was also doing the SPD's they did not have an answer. They just checked with the law firm and the charge for the four SPD's will be between $11,000 - $12,000 (ouch!).

Is anyone aware of any service that would take these documents and make an SPD?

Thanks!

Willow

Does anyone have any recommendations on seminars for a beginner looking to learn the basics?

Thanks in advance for any guidance.

Does anyone have an update on the new regulations? I thought they were scheduled to come out by the end of August. Someone must know something.

We have one ESOP, it is for a privately held company. I was asked to do research on a new (i think) provision which allows the Sponsor (as opposed to he plan) to offer put options to buy back particpant ESOP shares for non-marketable securities. Does anyone have any information on this relating to mechanism, requirements, type of transaction etc? I confess to having very limited ESOP experience, so it might be easy to talk over my head. I thank you in advance for your time, consideration and patience.

the client had documents sitting around and decided to sign and send docs to IRS one year after receipt. by that point they were late. IRS wants client to pay 3000 dollar sanction rather than 750, the fee they would be eligible for had the submitted under VCP. their justification is they (the IRS) discovered the failure rather than the client bringing the error to the attention of the IRS through a VCP scenerio. I think this is unduly harsh under the circumstances. plan is small and plan sponsor did in effect turn himself in by submitting document. anyone have any suggestions on how to deal with the service on this?

I have a question about the simplified determination of creditable coverage test that was set forth in the CMS creditable coverage guidance. Specifically, a prescription drug plan is deemed to be creditable if it "provides reasonable access to retail providers, and optionally, for mail order coverage," among other things.

Assuming a plan meets all the other requirements but doesn't provide mail order coverage, does this mean that the plan does not satisfy the simplified creditable coverage test? Alternatively, does a plan have to offer mail order coverage in order to meet the simplified creditable coverage test?

Thank you in advance for any thoughts.