Good Morning All,

I am on the verge of obtaining a Benefits Specialist position where I will be focusing on the administration of benefit plans for their Canadian employees. The company is an American company who has more than half of its employees in Canada. I have practically no experience with the Canadian benefit system (both H&W, and DC and DB benefits), and was curious if anyone could point me in the right direction as to where to obtain the best, most recent information. IF I get this position, and I am almost positive I will, I want to jump out of the gate running and impress the employer out of the box.

Thanks.

Adam

Good Morning All,

I am on the verge of obtaining a Benefits Specialist position where I will be focusing on the administration of benefit plans for their Canadian employees. The company is an American company who has more than half of its employees in Canada. I have practically no experience with the Canadian benefit system (both H&W, and DC and DB benefits), and was curious if anyone could point me in the right direction as to where to obtain the best, most recent information. IF I get this position, and I am almost positive I will, I want to jump out of the gate running and impress the employer out of the box.

Thanks.

Adam

Good Morning All,

I am on the verge of obtaining a Benefits Specialist position where I will be focusing on the administration of benefit plans for their Canadian employees. The company is an American company who has more than half of its employees in Canada. I have practically no experience with the Canadian benefit system (both H&W, and DC and DB benefits), and was curious if anyone could point me in the right direction as to where to obtain the best, most recent information. IF I get this position, and I am almost positive I will, I want to jump out of the gate running and impress the employer out of the box.

Thanks.

Adam

Good Morning All,

I am on the verge of obtaining a Benefits Specialist position where I will be focusing on the administration of benefit plans for their Canadian employees. The company is an American company who has more than half of its employees in Canada. I have practically no experience with the Canadian benefit system (both H&W, and DC and DB benefits), and was curious if anyone could point me in the right direction as to where to obtain the best, most recent information. IF I get this position, and I am almost positive I will, I want to jump out of the gate running and impress the employer out of the box.

Thanks.

Adam

If I withdraw some of my contributions (not investment returns) from my Roth IRA is there any way to pay this back?

I've been contributing the maximum yearly amount, and plan to continue to do so, but I've run into a situation where I could sure use those funds for approximately 2 years but am loath to pull them out if I can't replace them later

Thanks!

I recently opened a Roth IRA. I'm a college student working full time. Should I contribute as much as I can afford to the IRA ($2,000 to $3,000 per year - leaving very little leftover for me to save somewhere else), or should I contribute less (say $1,000 or so) and save some money in a different type of account for things like a car, a house, or any other unexpected expenses that come up?

Also, a bit unrelated to Roth IRA's, but I will be getting married within the next two years. Can anyone give me some tips on how to prioritize my money? For example, is it more important to contribute the max to my IRA than it is to save for a downpayment on a house? When should I start saving for my children's future? etc. Thanks for your help!!

Jackie

Suppose you have a profit sharing plan with a 12/31/04 year end. Also, suppose the employer made 10% of pay profit sharing contributions (for the 2004 year) to all eligible participants by 7/31/04. The employer wants to convert the plan to a safe harbor 401(k) plan by 9/15/04. If safe harbor notices are provided to employees prior to 9/30/04, can we rely on safe harbor treatment for the 2004 year?

Thanks much.

I have a client that is toying with the idea of raising the plan's minimum loan amount from $1,000 to some higher amount. They are trying to reduce the quantity of loans. They have already restricted loans to one per participant but do not want to restrict loans by circumstance.

We explained that the plan would have to pass discrimination testing each year. We would charge quite a bit to do the testing. But they are still hanging on to the notion.

They want to know what would be the correction if they failed the test during some year. I haven't found any guidance to answer their question.

Is anyone familiar with type of circumstance?

A participant requests a loan and indicates she is single on application, and it goes thru.

Now we find out that she really is married (but separated).

What kind of correction needs to be made?

Is the loan void? Do we just get consent after the fact?

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

We have a client that uses revenue sharing to pay administrative fees for the plan. Due to reduced fees the revenue sharing exceeds the fees. How can the excess be handled? (1) returned to the plan as investment income and allocated to participants based on account balance? (2) returned to the plan and put in forfeitures? if so does it matter how forfeitures are handled?

Anyone aware of any guidance as to the mening of this term as used in 4.08 of 2003-44? The examples in the Rev Proc both involve practices that are discriminatory as well as "bad". Do you think that an element of discrimination is necessary to characterization as egregious? Stated differently, is a "bad" failure (e.g., failure to make required contributions) egregious if the parties affected include ALL participants?

I have a 401(k) plan that allows participants to change their elective deferral percentage each pay period. Is this OK? Many plans I have seen allow a participant to go to zero at any time, but then the participant cannot elect to defer again until the next open enrollment (usually quarterly). But I can't find any statutory or regulatory restriction on the frequency of changing the amount of deferral. Does anyone know?

I have a few plans in which the employer contributes a set dollar amount (which is higher than a single health plan) and then employees can elect family health insurance OR single health insurance and with the dollars left over select life insurance, FSA or DCSA or the cash option. With the job market such as it is - there have been alot of changes regarding spouses becoming eligible/ no longer eligible for another employers plan. Which then results in the employee wanting to change their own health plan. In the case that they drop from family to single coverage and would then have additional employer dollars available - could they elect to throw those dollars into the FSA or DCSA? I have always said this change could not be made as it is not a "Qualifying Event" but recent things I have read lead me to believe that if it is the employer's contribution that I may be incorrect. If they can't make the change - are they just out the employer dollars? That seems harsh! and really not in keeping with the DOL/ IRS and their typical quest to protect the employee's interests. Any input would be greatly appreciated!

If a 401(k) safe harbor plan excludes the highly compensated employees from the safe harbor contributions, and the plan only makes safe harbor contributions and no other contributions, is this still considered a plan making solely safe harbor contributions, and therefore gets the pass on top heavy?

We have a former employee who had to resign due to health reasons. He is age 67. He is trying to obtain the necessary documentation to receive the extended time under COBRA that is allowed for someone who is disabled. The catch seems to be that the COBRA requirements state you must have a letter from Social Security Adminsitration declaring you to be disabled. Social Security Admin. has told him that since he is over age 65 they will not review his claim of disability because he is already receiving full social security benefits. Therefore, he can not get the letter he needs in order to receive this extention of time under COBRA.

He has asked our COBRA administrator if a letter from his doctor would be sufficient, but they are sticking to the point that the regs state it is a letter from SSA that is needed.

Has anyone ever run into this before? Is anyone aware of any case law or interpretations out there about this issue? I really appreciate any information that anyone can provide.

I have a very small Profit Sharing plan (7 participants) where everyone has their own self-directed account set up with various brokers. The plan has operated in this fashion for many years without a problem.

The Plan Trustee would like us to create a letter for the participants to sign yearly saying "he (the participant) has reviewed the investments in his self-directed account and is satisfied with his investment choices". Also he wants a statement added to the letter saying that the participant is reponsible for his investment gains/losses.

Has anyone else prepared a letter to this effect? Or can anyone offer any advice?

Thanks.

I have an employee who asked if Hypnotherapy is reimbursable expense. She says she is not sleeping to the point of causing physical issues, and said she can get a Drs note to back it up. It is not covered by her insurance and I am not finding a whole lot to go on. Thanks

Our previous FSA vendor provided the appeals review process as a standard part of their administration service.

Our new vendor does not provide the service, and the SPD directs all first level appeals directly to the employer to review.

Is this typical practice for the employer to review the FSA appeals? If so, what steps do you take to do this?

Thanks.

I have not been able to find any firm documentation anywhere to explain how to do this. Supposedly, a block of business is available which requires this to be done.

Let's take the simple case. Normally, a DB plan will test on the change in accrued benefits from year to year (at least that is one of the testing options). However, a 412i has an accrued benefit equal to the value of the contracts used to fund the participant. Do we just convert the value to a monthly benefit and compare from year to year this way??

It has come to my attention that if you bought a variable annuity sometime prior to 2000 inside of an IRA and your account balance is lower than your death benefit you can reap huge tax savings for your heirs...It doesn't help the account holder all that much but it really helps the kids later down the road.

It works like this... Many people bought variable annuities during the late 90s and in most variable annuities your premium payment becomes your death benefit. Some have annual ratchets and other bells and whistles that boost your death benefit on each anniversary date. Like most stocks, many of these annuities got crushed when the market went down but what most insurance companies didn't realize was that when you took some money out of your IRA or rolled part of it over to another IRA the death benefit didn't go down on a pro rata percentage basis, it was just reduced by the dollar amount that you withdrew. Bad deal for the insurance companies when Roth IRA's came into the picture... Finally after getting scathed, the insurance companies changed the wording in their contracts to reflect if you moved any money out, the death benefit drops by the same percentage. (IE.. You have 50K in account balance and you move 10K your death benefit drops by 20%)

Now that you are fully confused let me give you an example of real world example of what I did for a client.

The client invested 100K in an annuity(within an IRA) in 2000. The client mismanaged their investments and the account balance fell to 50K in 2 years...Bad deal for the client. However, after careful consideration we rolled over 45K to another IRA where we bought a mutual fund. We then reduced the death benefit of the IRA annuity to 55K with only 5K in account balance. We then converted the annuity IRA to a Roth IRA. My client now has 55K in death benefit that when he passes away will go to his heirs tax free in the Roth IRA and also has a 45K IRA for himself. Granted the client had to pay regular income taxes on the 5K he converted but he is essentialy giving his heirs 55K income tax free upon his death(provided he lives 5 Years). Their is obviously no monetary benefit for the client but he figured at least he could help his kids. There are thousand upon thousand of these cases out there and you won't hear one insurance company talk about them.

Now the insurance company hated this but had to do it based upon how the policy was written and I am sure when the IRS sees this, they won't be happy either because of all the tax revenue they will lose as a result of this, but it is completely legitimate until they change the law. The client is happy, I am happy, and well the government and insurance company...SO SORRY!