Have a signed QDRO, March of 2004. Determination Date is 10/1/2001. The Assigned Benefit is for a specific Dollar amount of the Participants Balance, assigned to AP, "without adjustment for losses".

Should I calculate the earnings from 10/1/2001 until the last valuation (3/31/04) but not include losses? This does not make sense to me. Any help is appreciated

Are there any regulations (SEC / ERISA) that prohibit a bank to act as trustee for DC & DB plans of a publicly traded company that the majority owner is also majority owner of the privately held bank?

I am unsure of this but are 401(k) assets, protected from lawsuits against the participants or account holder? Specifically, I'm wondering if 401(k) assets are protected like O.J. Simpson's pension was (I think it was protected...) from civil lawsuits (not necessarily for killing somebody but maybe from somebody falling on your home's steps, etc...). Would IRA assets also be protected?

Thanks

A company maintains a master welfare benefit plan that provides various types of benefits, including retiree medical and life insurance for union and non-union employees. The company has 3 separate VEBAs to fund this plan. Each VEBA contains a short statement in the preamble that sets forth the VEBA's "fundamental purpose." The fundamental purpose of one is to provide retiree medical benefits under the plan to non-bargaining participants. The fundamental purpose of another is to provide retiree medical benefits under the plan to bargaining participants. The fundamental purpose of the third is to provide retiree life benefits under the plan to participants regardless of their bargaining status. Other than these statements, the VEBAs are identical and do not have any language that specifically says that assets can be used only to pay certain types of benefits under the plan. To date, the company has used each VEBA to pay only the types of benefits described in the fundamental purpose.

The VEBA for non-bargaining retiree medical has a liquidity problem, and the company would like to use assets in the other 2 VEBAs to pay retiree medical benefits for non-bargaining participants.

Can the company transfer assets from the other 2 VEBAs into the non-bargaining VEBA?

If not, could the company accomplish the result by amending the other 2 VEBAs to revise their "fundamental purpose"?

Can the company just disregard the "fundamental purpose" and pay non-bargaining retiree medical benefits out of the other 2 VEBAs?

Any help would be appreciated.

Let's suppose a client determines that a participant wasn't eligible to receive a profit sharing contribution after all.

The deposit had been made, the deduction had been taken from the employer's tax return, and the tax return had been filed.

Is it appropriate for that money to be returned to the employer, or should it be deposited in a forfeiture account and be considered a plan asset?

I'm using an FIL method and my UAL is negative and I'm not in Full Funding. Sec. 4.01(2) of RP 2000-40 grants automatic approval if I want to re-establish my UAL.

Q1: If I do this, it looks like the re-established base should be amortized over 10 years. Do you all agree?

Q2: If the Plan was amended this year to increase benefits, any reason why I can't re-establish my UAL recognizing the amendment or should I create two bases. One, my re-established base and two, my recent amendment. I guess the two base approach would give me a lower min since the amendment is 30 years and the re-established base is 10 (I think).

I inherited a plan that has a 10-year certain and life as the normal form. The QJSA for a married participant is 50% J&S and the QJSA for an unmarried participant is a "10 year certain and life". There is no life annuity available under the plan.

It is my understanding that a QJSA for an unmarried participant must be a single life annuity (Treasury reg. 1.401(a)-20 Q&A 20). Am I correct that the plan must offer a single life annuity for unmarried participants as the QJSA? The 10-year certain an life can be an optional form of benefit offered under the plan.

Thanks.

We have a client (he is a CPA) that refuses to give us his Schedule C so we can calculate plan compensation for him, thus calculating the appropriate contributions for the plan. He says that his comp is "well over the limit" and that he will not give us his Sch. C. He says that it is not our job to determine his compensation and we should accept the "well over the limit" answer and proceed with his contribution calculation. Has anyone else run into clients such as this and how should we proceed. I believe part of our job IS to determine plan compensation, which is not always "well over the limit". Help!!

Normally if a client doesn't get their failed ADP refunds done withing 12 months after the close of the plan year we calculate the corrective QNEC for them using either a bottom up formula, straight percent formula, flat dollar formula or using the one to one correction method. For the 2002 plan year, what effect, if any, would recharacterizing part of the refunds as catch up have on the end result of the QNEC?

For example, 2002 ADP test was just completed and refunds needed to be done by 12/31/2003. It is determined that some of the HC's refunds would have been recharacterized as age 50 catch up had the refunds been done timely.

Thanks!

If an employee is no longer employed, whether he is terminated, quits or is offerred a severance package, he can request a full disbursement, correct?

What tax and penalties apply? 20% tax?

What happens to outstanding loans?

State of California.

If I get divorced will I have to liquidate my 401K and split with my ex? Can she force me to do this? If so, what are the penalties? The 401K is provided through Wells Fargo.

Do I have to file the amended returns on the 2000 and 2001 forms or can I use current forms?

Two plans with participant directed investments maintained by two separate members of a controlled group have one contract account at Manulife Financial. The monies in the plan are kept separate by "division" within the contract. Is this a master trust or not?

For clarification, each plan is sponsored by only one of the members of the controlled group.

Can a participant who receives the maximum contribution allowable to a defined contribution plan make contributions to a traditional or other IRA?

An exception to the 5-year repayment rule exists for loans used to acquire a principal residence.

First, are there requirements that a plan require substantiation -- at the time of the loan -- from the participant re: the use of the loan proceeds? If so, what needs to be obtained by the plan?

Second, if a plan wanted to move its loan application/approval process to its web-based administrative platform, would an electronic certification by the participant that the loan proceeds being applied for were going to be used for the acquisition of a PR be okay?

Any specific cites for this?

Thanks!

Our payroll vendor currently receives names, address, date of birth of all of our ee's, as well as whether our ee's are taking flex med deductions and deductions for health and dental.

Under this circumstance, is the above information considered PHI and should we therefore be asking our payroll vendor to sign a business agreement?

Does anyone know the address to where you send a copy of the complaint to the Secretary of Treasury under 502(h)?

[Never mind. I found it.]

If my plan pays a death benefit equal to the PVAB, do I have to apply the GATT minimum to calculate the lump sum?

My instinct is "yes", but consider this:

* The plan is already paying more than the lump sum value on a GATT basis of the required REA death benefit (value of 50% survivor benefit)

* I can pay any addtional death benefit I want in addition to the QPSA, like a flat dollar amount

* Why can't I just define my death benefit to be PVAB based on plan equivalence without regard to 417(e) since is already more than the required QPSA value?

Thoughts?

Our participant loan policy has a cure period for missed payments. Under the cure period, missed payments must be made by the end of the calendar quarter following the calendar quarter in which the payment was missed. This cure period is in compliance with the participant loan regulations (1.72(p)-1,Q&A10). However, what happens when the application of this cure period extends the due date of the missed payment beyond the end of the original amortization period? For example, a participant fails to make his last payment. The cure period would enable that participant to make up the payment long after the 5-year period required by Code Section 72(p)(2)©. Does anyone have any thoughts on this or know of any authority that addresses this issue? Thank you.

I am working on a participant statement that will print current and year-to-date information by fund, grouped by source. I've set it up using a pretty basic statement and then entered almost the identical statement as a sub-report only it uses YTD information. Everything works except one thing. I am running a report from 7/1/2003 - 12/31/2003. The current period data is fine, but the YTD for one person is incorrect.

This person had a beginning balance in 2 funds, but moved everything that was in one of the funds to the other fund on January 1. This fund does not show up on the YTD report, but the transfer into the second fund does appear as a transfer. I don't have any suppression elements in my report so I am assuming that the front end in Relius suppresses the activity if there is no beginning balance and no activity in the date range. And in this case, as of 7/1/2003 there isn't a beginning balance or activity. But it is the YTD section that doesn't show it when it needs to.

It also could be a linking issue. I was trying to link off of rptplan.rptfromdate and rptplan.rpttodate but rptplan is the only table in my report that contains those elements.

Does anyone have any thoughts?

Tim