If some one have all contribution calculation that can be done in a single template/Spreadsheet where you just input the formula based on plan and fill up comps & deferrals.

Can you share it?

According to the law you must give 30 days notice before a person becomes eligible to make deferrals to the plan. How is this calculated because a participants hours may vary in any given month? For salaried employees I would think we can make an assumption. The plan doc specifies that the eligibility is 175 hours and is using the actual hours method to calculate eligibility. 

Is it legal to specify that you have to be employed by the company on the last day of the year to receive profit sharing (new comparability, pro rata ect) even if they have earned eligibility throughout the year to be eligible for the profit sharing? Also is this possible to do with safe harbor non elective contribution or do they have to receive the non elective distribution regardless of their employment on the last day?

An employee works for two unrelated entities in 2022 (not in controlled group or ASG). He approaches the second employer to advise that due to contributions to his prior employer's 403(b) plan, he has now exceeded the 402(g) limit.  Since it is before the end of the plan year, is it permissible to move the excess contributions & attributable earnings to the current employer's 403(b) plan's suspense or forfeiture account and refund the contributions to the participant through payroll, or is it required to process a corrective distribution from the plan? 

A client plan delivered funds based on a terminated participant's rollover request. The payment included the participant's vested balance plus a $10,000 overpayment amount (a simple clerical error - check was written for $60,000 instead of $50,000). The error was caught within 30 days. Both the participant and receiving custodian were notified of the mistake. And the receiving custodian returned the $10,000 overpayment amount to the client plan in a timely manner.

Nothing has been reported yet.

Does the Form 1099-R reporting for the participant distribution need to include or otherwise address the $10,000 error in any way, since the participant received what was due and the original client plan was made whole?

Does the client plan need to report a plan failure?

I have not run into this previously, but I have a potential start up 401k that would be pretty routine in many ways, but the owner wants to include most sub-contractors in the plan.  He started his career as a sub-contractor and feels strongly that he wants to offer a 401k to them as well.

He is considering a safe harbor 401k match plan.  But how would that work in regard to withholding pay for individuals who are not on payroll but are paid without any tax withholding?    Would the SubCs indicate that only a portion of their income be paid to them while $X.XX goes into the 401k?  Can they employer provide the match on a payroll basis if they are included?  This seems like it could get messy......

Thanks

Hi, we offer a simple IRA. Our employee base is all per diem hourly workers. My question is, during open enrollment (11/1-12/31), does every employee have to re affirm their selection? or if they ignore the offer and are already enrolled in the prior calendar year (2022), should I continue their withholding into 2023

I know it might be off for some of you to read that an employee would not reply to this, but this is the reality with my workforce. 

thanks

Honestly, I should know this, but if a plan has no HCEs, can they still exclude classes (job classes) and have no testing? 

I've not used this group before and see it could be helpful, if for nothing else to vent. But I appreciate helpful comments and I know there are many knowledgeable people in here.  I enjoyed reading the history of some in here.  We went with Pentabs in 1991, then Quantech, then Relius in-house, and then Relius ASP in May 2020.  It was an adjustment but overall went well each time.

And I realize we are only 2 days into this new migration but we are all locked out of being able to log into Relius Admin.  Work accumulates rather quickly and so we hope for resolution soon.  There were multiple emails with instructions, pdfs, etc.  More than I wanted to deal with.  I called FIS this morning and was on hold for perhaps a half hour.  Someone did finally pick up - tells me maybe we aren't the only ones with this issue.  So I'm waiting for a callback and hope for resolution.

We had  trouble with the portal when that came out.  I finally got that to work but haven't logged on in months and can almost guarantee I will be blocked from logging in.  Any comments about your experience with this new migration?   I know we'll get there but it is frustrating.

Tom

Client paid 2x for one filing in error.

How do we request a refund?

There is nothing on the DOLs DFVC webpage; the client's receipt mentions the Office of the Chief Accountant, which of course is a recording asking to leave a message and "we'll get back to you."

Keep calling?

Any other suggestions?

If a corporation (A) changes name, entity type, and gets a new EIN for the new corporation (B), is there any reason why (B) can't assume the assets/liabilities of the existing corporation (A) Section 125 plan, similar to what often occurs in the qualified plan world? I don't see why not, although Section 125 and the 125 regs don't appear to address this. But there is some info in RR 2002-32.  With all the mergers/transactions going on, I assume this happens all the time?

A non-spouse beneficiary has elected to leave her inherited funds in the 401(k) plan. The plan does not allow annuities. She is married but does not wish to name her spouse as sole beneficiary of her assets in the plan. Is spousal consent required?

We have a new client that just realized that a '21 Matching contribution was missed for a few participants.  The question is do they need to also add interest for the late contributions?  I believe that since the market is down, that no interest was needed since the participants have actually benefited from not being invested in the market.  I just wanted to confirm that the stance was accurate.

Thanks!

I'm not a DB person, but a question came up as to required amendments for the past "several" years. These are a couple of plans that are evidently frozen (at what year I don't know) and that haven't been updated, apparently, for 4 or 5(ish) years. They are not cash balance/hybrid plans, not union, not governmental, (but one is apparently a non-profit) and apparently HAVE received IRS approval letters at some point in the past. They want to terminate the plans. I do not know if they are pre-approved plans or not - I'm speculating "not" but I don't know.

Looking at the IRS cumulative list, it doesn't appear that there is too much required in the way of DB amendments going back to 2016. Do you agree that this would generally be the case, or am I missing something obvious? Of course, if they are terminating, they would have to also be updated for CARES/SECURE as applicable, but that's a separate question.

Just looking for general thoughts. Thanks.

We're interested in working with an actuary who is an independent contractor and can provide all of the actuarial support electronically for the couple dozen or so DB plans that we have.  While we would do all of the administration on the plans, we would just rely on him/her to certify the schedule SB and AFTAP calculations, calculate RMD amounts, do cross-testing when DC plans are involved, and any other actuarial tasks that may come up in the normal course of a plan's life.  Please PM me if you are interested or know of someone who would be.  Thank you.    

Plan permits Hardship Distributions as per safe harbor rules. Limited to 401k and Rollover sources. Terminated Participants are permitted to request (plan delays termination distribution to close of plan year in which termination occurs). No limit to Hardship requests per year. Self Certification regarding other financial sources is accepted; documentation requested to substantiate need.  "Participant must provide supporting documentation or information, which may include bills, contracts, estimates, and other information that will support the request for a hardship distribution."

Former Terminated Participant has submitted a Hardship Request indicating it is "to pay tuition, related educational fees, and room and board expenses for the next twelve (12) months of post-secondary education for me, my spouse." The substantiation provided shows two multi-day programs offered by two prestigious universities (UPenn and Harvard) and a flight/hotel accommodations quote but none are actual bills or registrations with balances due. One program is live online for 5 days (4.5 hrs per day) in December 2022 and the other is 4 days on-site June 2023. Neither reflect whether a certificate or continuing ed of some kind is provided at the conclusion of attending.

Do the above multi-day presentations qualify for "post-secondary education" hardship purposes? And, must the substantiation reflect more than just what appears to be promotional materials for upcoming programs hosted by Universities? If there is no Participant specific registration how can the Plan be certain the request is for expenses that will be paid on behalf of the Participant as documented? Finally, does it matter that one of the events is next year, albeit within "the next twelve (12)months..."?

Thank you.

I have a city that is considered a second-class city in Nebraska (doesn’t have a population of more than 5k). They currently have a City Employee plan, Police Officers plan and a Firefighters plan. 

In Nebraska second-class Cities are not required to have separate plans for these different types of employees. That being the case, they would like to combined these three plans into one plan, having all current and future employees in the City employee plan. 

For the Fire plan, there’s no longer full-time firefighters, it’s a voluntary department now so no new contributions in that one - only balance is for one retired firefighter. There are police officers employed but they are getting the same contributions and vesting as the City employee plan.

I am newer to govenmental plans - are there any issues with merging these three plans I should be aware of?  A provisional comparison shows very few differences and they have already determined they would go with all the most lenient of the differing provisions.  What other issues should I be aware of, if any?  Thanks!

If I have a safe harbor plan either with non elective or match and I add in the new comparability profit sharing, do I have to run the ADP/ACP and top heavy tests on the entire plan or just the profit sharing portion? I know that the gateway requirement will need to be met, and that the non elective match can help offset this, but wanted to understand the testing requirements when adding profit sharing to safe harbor plans. 

I have a client who allows its employees to make a choice about cashing out their PTO bank or accruing additional time.  This no doubt triggers the constructive receipt doctrine.  Is it possible to use a haircut provision of 10% as a "substantial limitation" to work around the constructive receipt issue?  I know that these provisions were common in deferred compensation arrangements pre-409A.  However, I don't believe the IRS ever explicitly accepted the haircut approach but after losing several court battles opted for a non-enforcement approach.  As such, I am inclined to advise them against using a haircut provision.  Any input would be appreciated.    

We have a new comparability plan and I wanted to see if we can offset the cost of the gateway requirement with the 3% safe harbor non elective or if we have to give an addition 5% on top of that? Can we also offset it by a safe harbor match or no? 

Obviously this is all assuming that the 5% is lower then the 1/3 of the highest contribution to HCE's.