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I have a start up company that is planning on offering an HDHP and HSA plan along a hi and low PPO and an HMO. Employer is adamant about contributing 100% of HDHP deductible into Employee's HSA accounts via 12 equal installments. I have two questions.

First question: If an employee has a catastrophic situation the first month of the plan year, can employer help the needy employee with a lump sum payment to HSA to cover employee's deductible while only doing month by month deposits for all other less needy employees?

Second question: With the employer hell bent on incentivising all of the employees to participate in the HDHP, I'm concerned that the HDHP/HSA products are too new to give a 100% endorsement and that employer should cool off since many of the products / concepts are untested? Feedback?

I'm looking for comments on charging terminated vested participants an account maintenance fee. Does anyone have any practical experience with this? Are the fees typically paid directly from the plan to the administrator? Would these amounts be placed in an escrow account or something? Could the fees be applied however the sponsor sees fit (for example, dividing the fees amongst a number of vendors)? Any advice/tips on this would be appreciated. Thanks.

We would greatly appreciate comments on the following:

If an employee is discovered to have stolen pension assets, what reporting, disclosure and notification obligations does the plan sponsor have? Form 5500, Schedules G and H (covering prohibited transactions; requiring disclosure of a loss due to fraud or dishonesty) are relevant.

Would this constitute a "reportable event" and require the filing of PBGC Form 10?

Is anyone aware of any other obligations to the DOL, IRS, PBGC or any other government agency?

Does it matter if the plan if a single employer or multiemployer plan?

Could there be state law obligations?

Thank you very much for your comments.

Donald

Father owns 100% of company A. His over-age 21 son owns 100% of company B.

The father tells me that the "two companies are independent", but the father says that sometimes when Company B (son's company) can't meet payroll, company A (father's company) will give Company B money to meet payroll.

What further questions do I need to get answers to so that I can definitively determine if it is common control or not.

Has anybody ever seen a DB plan that requires the benefit of a participant, alternate payee, surviving spouse or any other beneficiary who can't be located to be forfeited unless and until the individual shows up and establishes a valid claim for the forfeited amount?

For a Multiple Employer plan, a separate Schedule T was prepared for each participating employer of the plan. The participating employer was identified on lines 1a - 1b. With the elimination of Schedule T in 2005, it appears that a separate schedule is not required for a participating employer (with the exception of Sch B).

Could this be correct or is it an oversight?

My company was bought though a stock acquisition on 4/15/05. As an incentive to stay, the new company is giving my company's employees a signing bonus, some of which are as much as $65,000. In order to receive the signing bonus employees must be employed on 4/15/05 though 4/15/07.

The purchaser has a 401(k) plan (Plan A) and so do we (Plan B). The plans will eventually merge sometime in 2007. We would like to put the signing bonus into one of the 401(k) plans and have a 2-year cliff vesting schedule so that employees cannot have access to the money until 4/15/07.

I know that we cannot put the money in our plan because we must count service with our company towards vesting. Could the money be put into Plan A and not count the service with our company? Can you have a cliff vesting schedule that runs from 4/15/05 - 4/15/07?

I know not all employee incentive bonus dollars can be contributed in one year because of the 415 limits. The formula we are proposing to use is the 415 limit minus the elective deferral limit (our plan is an EE Payall). If there is any money left it would be put into the Plan A in the next limitation year. I think this formula passes the 401(a)(4) test. I know the Plan A will also need to pass coverage. (I assume that this also would not allow us to use the coverage transition period.)

Does anyone have any other ideas as to how we can put the dollars into one of the 401(k) plans? We do not want to maintain a nonqualified plan.

Thanks!

I was reading the updates on the changes to the 2005 Form 5500. I see the IRS has discontinued the Sch. T and placed a coverage question on Sch. R. However, it does not look like the instructions changed for who has to file a sch. R. For instance a profit sharing plan that had zero distributions does not have to file a sch. R. I get the impression though that this is not want the IRS intended and this schedule should be required. Any other thoughts or comments?

We maintain a separate plan (because of a controlled group situation) in which only agency employees may participate. Because pay/personnel records are maintained by each agency, rather than our corporate headquarters, things go on that I never seem to know about until after the fact.

Recently, the accountant for one of the agencies, who happens to do the payroll and send contributions through to the record keeper, decided he no longer wanted to be an employee of the agency even though he's spending more than 40 hours per work doing the agency accounting. He convinced the agency principal that he should be paid as an independent contrator. (Rumor has it that he did this due to his impending divorce.) Anyway, he has an account balance in the plan and an outstanding loan. I just found out that the independent contractor status occurred about a month ago, and luckily he stopped contributing, but he did not stop making loan repayments.

I'm totally lost on how we should be handling this. In my mind's eye, because he's no longer an employee, he should not be permitted to make contributions or loan repayments. I'm also not sure that we can permit him to withdraw his entire account balance, which is what he wants to do now that I said he can't make loan repayments. By the way, our plan does not permit a terminated employee to continue to make loan repayments.

Any thoughts??

What type of state regulatory laws would apply to governmental plans, such as tax-exempt colleges and universities? Specifically, regarding VEBAs funding health benefits for employees of these organizations, would the state department of insurance regulate reserves and surplus levels for the self funded portion of these plans? Or, would that regulation be subject only under the auspices of the DOL?

Don Levit

I have a client who took it upon herself to take a loan from the plan. However, she took $5,000 more than she was entitled too. What do I do now? Does she have to repay including interest and earnings, or does the $5,000 she wasn't entitled too get treated as a distribution?

Any ideas, before I get more annoyed?

A person, age 72 makes a large withdrawal from his IRA. Can the taxes due on the withdrawal be stretched over a period of 10 years?

Company owner has a 401(k) plan and wants to rollover about $16,000 in after-tax money into the plan. Assuming that the plan allows for after-tax money and assuming the TPA accounts for this money separately (tracks pre and post money separately), is this a problem? Also, is there any special paperwork that needs to be completed to accomplish?

Thanks

Hi, I am very new to Relius and was wondering if someone could just tell me how to make Relius calculate top heavy contributions and allocate them to the required employees. Right now I am running the ADP test and then manually posting the required top heavy contributions becasue I cant figure out how to get the system to do it.

I am not going to training for a month so have to struggle here for awhile. I went onto the help topics but I cant find it.

I've only used this for 3 days so please in "dummy" language. This is more complicated than I expected!

We have a few qualified plans ( profit sharing and money purchase plans) established by small business owners, and we are unable to reach them or hear from them. Some for more than 2 years , some less.

Can we escheat these amounts to the State? Or should we send the balance to the DOL( someone though they hears that the second option was available).

Thanks very much

Jane

Could someone please assist me with the following question?

I am looking for information on things to watch out for if I were to transfer my retirement plan from overseas to Amercia (from Australia). I assume the taxation of incoming overseas retirement plans is the main concern. Are there any PDF files that I can read about this?

regards

In California state law permits public agencies e.g., school districts, to set up 401(a) db and dc plans. Many agencies have such plans for a variety of purposes. These include early retirement, terminal pay and supplemental benefits (these are mainly db.) Does anyone know if NY law permits such plans i.e., dc and/ or db? What about other states?

A sole prop (she is only employee) had earned income of $100,000 after 50% reduction for SS taxes.

Therefore, the client could have contributed up to $20,000 (25% of 80,000) to her PS plan.

The tax return due date was 4/15 and the contribution was not made by that time.

Clearly the person cannot receive a deduction for 2004, but if the client makes the contribution for 2004 now (7/22/05) does the client also get hit with the 10% non deductible contribution excise tax?

Point being is that it is not above the 20,000 limit, just late.

Thanks.

Employer is applying for the Medicare Part D subsidy for the prescription drug coverage provided under its retiree health plan. Retiree health plans are funded with Code Section 501©(9) VEBAs. VEBA trust agreements include the requisite language limiting payment of trust assets for the exclusive purposes of providing benefits and defraying the reasonable costs of administering the retiree health plans.

Employer wants to know if it can be reimbursed from the VEBA for the expenses it incurs related to the Medicare Part D subsidy - the actuarial certification, supplying participant Rx data to CMS, and the creditable coverage notices.

I'm almost positive almost all of the expenses would not be reimbursable by the VEBA, because the subsidy only benefits the employer. There is no benefit to the plan participants, so the expenses would not be reasonable costs of administering the retiree health care plan.

But I'm not sure about the creditable coverage notices. The notices are a requirement for the subsidy, but the notices do provide some benefit to the participants.

Any thoughts?