I am trying to pin down what the market value of an entry level position as an Administrator in a 401(k) TPA Consulting firm is going for in the Boston area? Can anyone comment? Better yet, is there any website such as Salary.com that would give me a good idea if what we are paying is in the ballpark of my competitors?

I have a software design firm (S-corp) consisting of 2 individuals that will adopt a DB plan for 2004 (cutting it close). Do you think they are subject to PBGC premiums? Would you consider this a professional service corporation?

Thanks

I am looking for a few cases in which the employer was sued for not having a particular benefit or not communicating its vailability.

For example, the employer requested that a particular item say, bypass surgery, be limited to a maximum lifetime benefit of $50,000 on a plan that pays 80% of Schedule. This limit does not affect the premiums so it was not a decision based on cost. An employee needs more than $50,000 woth of treatment but cannot afford it, so foregoes or delays treatment which causes a bigger more expensive problem. The employee sues.

Or the item would have been employee paid, but the employee was never given the option.

Or the employer waives EAP with no cost savings or it was employee paid anyhow, and similar situation develops.

Or the employer has EAP or the limit, but neither the employee enrollment material, the SPD or Certificate of Coverage makes mention, so the employee is not aware and does not get adequate or timely treatment then discovers that it had been available all along so sues.

Does anyone know of any such cases?

Does anyone know if a mandatory employee contribution to a money purchase pension plan (as a condition of employment) is subject to FICA or income tax? In other words, is the contribution treated as an after-tax employee contribution or an employer contribution (which is not subject to income or FICA taxes)?

We deal with single employer/ single participant plans for small businesses. We are looking for a reference/book that outlines what investments other than stock and mutual funds are available to them. I.e. can they hold rentals in their plan, or can they build a building for resale with plan funds etc.

I will be rolling a 403(b) into a IRA which the agent tells me will work then when I'm ready to retire, if it hasn't made 6%, then all the years can be reworked & changed. Has anyone heard of this?

Client had a one man sole prop DB Plan for 8 years. The benefit was less than the maximum under 415. He retired at age 65 and the plan was terminated 12/31/03. The last FSA year was 2003. He had no earned income in 2003, so was required to make a non-deductible contribution.

Rollover to IRAs with consent and waiver of full lump-sum were in 2004. Again, no earned income in 2004 (he's retired).

I prepared the final EZ w/o Schedule B (no FSA).

He's now 67. He called to ask if we can roll back the termination or start a new DB plan. It would be sponsored by the same company (he's a sole prop using a dba). He says a UNI-K wouldn't be enough deduction if he went back to work.

I can get my brain around "service" under the new Plan, but "participation" has me puzzled.

I'll stop here and see what ideas may be out there.

Can a Traditional IRA be rolled over to a 457(b) plan?

I would like to get some opinions on this situation.

Wife owns 25% interest in an LLC. Wife's Parents own a 50% interest in same LLC. Husband's IRA would like to purchase a 20% interest in this LLC. Under 4975, the stockholdings of Wife are clearly attributed to Husband for purposes of determining whether the LLC is treated as a "disqualified person". However, I'm not sure whether the stockholdings of Wife's Parents are also attributed to Husband. I would greatly appreciate any insight that anyone can provide.

Hi all,

If a hospital maintains a 457 plan, does that hospital have access to participant funds in the event the hospital becomes insolvent? I thought that was the whole risk with a 457 plan. However, someone told me that once the assets are in a trust, they are basically untouchable.

Please help. Thanks.

I have a probably extremely naive question, but cannot find the answer. Say this year I contribute the max $$ to a ROth IRA becuase I am at AGI $95,000...right at cut off as single filer. In a year or 2 when my income goes up and exceeds the AGI the IRS allows for the year. Say for example, in 2006 I am making $130,000 and by law not allow mre than $115,000 AGI for single filers. I have some money in the ROTH IRA from previous years, I now have to make the money i already have in the ROth work becuase I am dead in the water for contributing any more. Is this correct? So I can screw around with the money I aleady have in there when my salary was not as high...allowing me to contribute and open a Roth IRa, but cannot contribute more to it at that point since i am making so much?

2nd question, I know there are tax consequences on this but I can roll a 401k into a traditional IRA then a ROth. My question is the contribution limits. FOr example say I have $10k in my 401k, roll to traditional, then roll into a Roth. SInce the ma yearly allowed is $4000, do I take distribution on the other $6k? Or am I allowed to roth all 10k into it and pay taxes on it?

Thanks for the help

Are there limits imposed by the IRS to the amount an employee can contribute after-tax to a 401k?

Has anyone heard of this product, or anything similar? The marketing material describes a Cash Balance with self-direction of investments. "It is a defined benefit plan that acts like a super 410(k) profit sharing plan...". Self-direction of investments in a db plan used to be an oxymoron. When did that change?

We have a plan participant in our Profit Sharing Plan that has a personal financial planner/broker for her personal assets. This participant's Profit Sharing and Safe Harbor account balances are held in commingled brokerage accounts with many type of investments (bonds, mutual funds, securities, etc.).

The participant's personal broker has contacted the Plan Administrator requesting the actual investments for the commingled accounts. The participant has already been provided with the 2003 Summary Annual Report.

The broker is under the impression that each participant has assets earmarked for each participant, which is not the case.

What is the Plan Administrator required to provide the broker under the law? What if he had a POA on behalf of the participant?

In order for a death benefit under a DB plan to be "incidental", the maximum benefit is limited to 100 x "anticipated monthly retirement benefit". What exactly is the "anticipated monthly retirement benefit"?

I suppose it means the accrued benefit projected to the normal retirment date based on anticipated service at normal retirement and projected compensation at normal retirement. In the projection of compensation, can the current compensation be projected based on the valuation salary increase assumption or should the current average compensation be used?

Sorry for the long post, but we do not want to approach legal unless absolutely necessary. I am recently married to a divorcee. Her previous husband of more than 20 years agreed to QDROs for his Bell Atlantic Savings Plan, ESOP and Pension Plan. The basis is a 50% award as of the date of filing for divorce (9/92).

My wife's attorney was a real jack-ass. From the final Judgment of Divorce in 1995, he chose to compose the QDROs instead of using the sample documents made available to him from Bell Atlantic ($$$$$ FEES). He was able to qualify the ESOP in 1996, but continually failed on the Savings Plan and the Pension Plan. At some point, he effectively stopped trying to prepare documents that would be the plan requirements. Further, he died about a year ago.

My wife is not an assertive person, nor has she any kind of understanding or knowledge in this complex area. About two months ago, she brought this to my attention and I have been working on this project with some degree of success and also have run into some problems. Hopefully, your comments and advice will prove to be helpful.

1. Her ex-husband has been and continues to take an adverserial approach to anything she does. In fact, he has all but disowned his three sons by their marriage. He has remarried with one daughter who was born before the divorce was filed.

2. I am not certain of the date, but Bell Atlantic merged and is now part of Verizon.

3. My wife did not elect to take her distribution from the ESOP after it was filed and qualified, although she does have written communication from the Bell Atlantic QDRO Unit.

4. Apparently, when Bell Atlantic merged, their own QDRO Unit was disbanded and Hewitt Associates is now the TPA.

5. Verizon Employee Benefits has no record of the Qualified Order on the ESOP! My wife does have written communication from Bell Atlantic describing the valuation, which was made available to her after the Order was qualifed. My understanding is that once the Order is qualifed, a seperate account is created for the benefit of the alternate payee.

6. I recently received written approval from Hewitt regarding the QDRO for the Pension Plan and will be getting the Order signed and sealed by the court within a few days.

7. The Order submitted for the Savings Plan was denied after review. The only reason for the denial was that they cannot permit under the existing plan a valuation date prior to January 1999. I am "assuming" that there was a change from the "Savings Plan" with Bell Atlantic upon the merger to Verizon and the plan is no longer is effect. Hewitt will approve the Order with a change to the new valuation date, but the participant will not approve and with a reasonable basis.

8. I spoke to DOL (EBSA). They directed me to communicate with the Plan Sponsor (Verizon) to determine what happened to the ESOP qualified order and how to deal with the valuation and distribution of the Savings Plan.

9. Hewitt denies having anything to do with the adminstration of the ESOP, but is making some kind of attempt to help via their contacts at Verizon.

10. You should know that the participant has retained counsel after copies of the proposed QDROs were presented to the court for seal and signature. However, in his attorney's letter to the court, he did specifically say that we would have no objection to any order that was approved by Hewitt.

11. I have found it virtually impossible to find a telephone number that a non-Verizon employee can use to reach Employee Benefits.

12. An finally, please... no lectures on my wife's not keeping track on this issue. She had to deal with three boys on her own that presented plenty of problems and issues.

So........

A. Even though there has been a merger/acquisition of Bell Atlantic to Verizon, I would presume that they should still be liable and accountable for failing to have the ESOP of the participant split into seperate accounts. Further, the fact that they seem unable to find ANYTHING regarding this order might suggest that they have failed their fiduciary responsibility in securing the rights of the alternate payee. My understanding under ERISA is that once the Order has been Qualified and accepted, the alternate payee has the same rights and protection as the plan participant.

B. I am pretty much confused as to my approach with the "Savings Plan". If that specific Plan was discontinued, I would hope that all records would be archived and a valuation for 9/1992 would be available. If that is the case and the 50% share is defined, can and how would that value be updated with the length of time involved. If the Plan was "changed" to it's current 401-k status, how should the alternate payee approach this situation.

C. Clearly, recordkeeping is very much an issue. If I should be stonewalled in trying to clear this matter, what remedies are available? Again, trying to speak directly to a Verizon manager in their Employee Benefits department has not yet been possible. Any ideas?

Once again, please excuse the length of this post. My intent was to cover every possible issue with clarity. Thank you in advance for any assistance you can provide.

Tom

I've been reading almost all of the threads in this message board for those starting the roth ira, and it has been plenty of help and very informative, but I'm still unclear on how everything works... I understand some of the things to consider.. such as expense ratio, NO LOAD fund, something that will be a "reasonable" performance.. However, I'm still a bit unclear about the entire process. I have lots of basic questions, so, I hope that it won't be too repetitive to answer.

So, just a little background on myself. I'm 20, junior at the university and is planning to open a roth ira, and i'm thinking my initial investment is probably going to be $2,000. I'm thinking that I'm going to go with Fidelity rather than vanguard, still unsure, but more than likely fidelity.

First, i know that i should be investing in more aggressive stocks? since i'm starting young. I'm not too sure if this really does matter, since it's only going to be starting off and trying to learn how this entire things works.. When i was looking at vanguard's website, I would probably consider myself a "balance" stock risk taker.. I'm not too sure which one those are, so I was hoping that people could give me some examples.. like, I'm thinking (FDEGX) which is fidelity aggressive growth fund?? i have no clue if that's a wise idea, or simply idiotic. or if I should go with something like the spartan 500 index fund (FSMKX), i know it's been suggested to go with index fund... and are these all mutual funds as oppose to stock?? no idea.

So, the next part of my question where I'm a bit confused is,.. let's say i choose the index fund, is all of the $2000 going to just (FSMKX)? and if so, then the next year, if i put in another $2000 or i choose to put it in monthly, do i put into FSMKX again or should i choose another one??? don't understand what happens afterwards (the first year i suppose).. but i'm sure that shouldn't be a main concern at this point, just curious.

Anwyays, I also understand that no one could possible tell me which is the right one to choose from.. but i have no direction.. which leads me to my other main concern. When peopel open up roth ira, is it mostly done online? I tend to like face to face interaction. I was thinking of going to see a fidelity representative to actually start this whole roth ira for me; but from my understanding.. this would cost more? Is it worth it? or if i should try to figure everything out and do the entire process online? If i do end up seeing the fidelity, do they charge much for it?

thanks in advance to those who do respond back for any help and insight!

I am new to insurance industry. I wanted to know, what OmniPlus is and how it can be implemented in Insurance Industry. It would be great if anyone can get me an idea where I can get the tutorials for OmniPlus or just give me an idea how it works.

Thanks

An employer has just adopted a profit sharing plan and plans to make a contribution by the due date of its tax return. Does the employer need to fund the plan with at least $1.00 before the end of the year in order for it to be established in 2004 or has that rule gone by the wayside?

Thanks.