Can anyone recommend a good source for drafting a Wrap Plan? I am working on drafting one for the first time and need a good resource.

I know that another person had a post from four years ago that he had written an article about drafting wrap plans in the late 1980s. I couldn't track that article down. Plus, I worry since it is not very current.

Thanks.

We have an employee that is out on Long Term Disability. They are not making any contributions right now to their FSA. Can they still submitt claims or use their FSA Card?

We have a client who would like to terminate their 401(k) plan and establish either a simple IRA or simple 401(k) this year. Is there any waiting rule (successor plan rule)? Do the participant funds have to be transferred to the Simple?

Some of our clients are receiving refunds from their broker/dealers due to an over-paid sales charge for large investments of mutual funds.

How do you equitably allocate the refund? It would be time consuming and cumbersome to determine trade amounts by specific participant. Some of the refunds are less than $1,000. If the document allows for it, should the refunds be used to offset fees?

Has anyone received these investor discount checks?

Does anyone have a sample notice or language for the new QJSA/QPSA disclosures we will need to provide for DC Plans? October 1 will be here before you know it and we want to be ready ahead of time.

non-profit employer is partially funded by a municipality - municipality offers contributory employee health plans. non profit employer maintains a fully-insured contributory private health plan because it is cheaper than munipals offerings and some employees have opted for participation in those plans. Municipality has open enrollment in October of ea year with effective date of coverage Jan 1. Non-profit employer has fiscal year of 7-1 and wants their own health plan to renew on that date - insurer says fine. How do we handle open enrollment for currently insured employees under the private plan -can it be June of each year (the 31 day rule)? How do we handle the non-profit employees participating in the municipal plan that want to change over to the employers private plan? Can they participate in the June open enrollment sponsored by the non-profit employer? Do they have to wait for the municipals open enrollment in October to exit for January 1? Will we have to have two enrollments per year?

Thanks for your guidance and keeping us in compliance without discriminating!

MAT

We have a 403(b) sponsored by a church which was established 1/1/03. We must determine if it is/can be a "nonelecting" or "electing" plan. We use the Franklin-Templeton ad. agreement and custodial agreement. The adoption agreement allows for setting eligibility (for participation) requirements and age 21 & 1 yr. svc were established. Also, excluded ordained staff (3 pastors) all of whom are covered by a denominational plan. No HCEs in the covered group (1 of the pastors may be an HCE though I don't know that for sure). An employer discretionary contribution may be made to participants who earn a yr. of service in the plan year. 1] Is this plan electing or nonelecting? 2] Are there any problems with excluding ordained staff? 3] Is this plan subject to ADP (if there were any eligible HCEs)? If it is an electing plan (no election statement has been filed), I understand this can be filed with a 5500 - is there a specific format or a standard form available somewhere? If we got this all wrong, what to do to fix? Thanks.

Does anyone know if Corbel has addressed the new requirements in their forms? I can't tell that they have.

Thanks.

A Safe Harbor Top-Heavy Plan that provides the 3% 100% vested contribution to satisfy the safe harbor and "top-heavy" requirements also makes a matching contribution of 50% up to 6% of deferrals.

Is the plan now out of the "top-heavy" exemption because it makes the additional matching contribution? And does the plan have to do the 401(a) test on the matching contributions?

An employer is looking to get rid of his SEP and start a PS plan. PS plan will be adopted in 2004. The employer would like to keep out anyone who has terminated employment in 2004. So, I will propose a 7/1 effective date, but can the employer still use full year compensation from 1/1/2004 - 12/31/2004, even though the initial plan year will be from 7/1/04 - 12/31/04?

Much has been written lately about SSN use and the right to privacy. I've seen many printed valuation reports that use SSN as the identifier simply thrown out - not shredded or placed in recycling...

Is there any potential liability with this practice? I've mentioned on several occasions that a paper shredder should be standard office equipment, but it seems to fall on deaf ears.

Am I correct that an ESOP can be leveraged without involving a third-party lender? In other words, employer loans $1,000,000 to ESOP. ESOP turns around an buys out majority shareholder for $1,000,000 who defers gain on the sale. Employer then makes cash contributions to ESOP which ESOP uses to turn around and pay back to the employer to pay off debt. Basically a round-robin transaction cash-wise that allows shareholder redemption with pre-tax dollars.

Anyone seen this done or is third-party financing more popular?

Does anyone know of a website with old Federal Register pages? The official government site only goes back to 1994. I am looking for something from the late 1980s (volume 53).

Client withheld the 20% Federal Tax withholding on several 2003 distributions. However, the client never remitted the taxes to the IRS. We just found that out and are trying to gauge if there is a special approach to take at this point (any IRS correction programs) or just deposit the late taxes with a 2003 tax coupon and wait for the IRS penalties/correspondence on the issues. Anyone have any good ideas/opinions on how they might proceed in this situation. Thanks for any thoughts.

Can a Traditional IRA be transferred into a SEP IRA? Is there a difference for a Simple IRA?

I'm drawing a blank. What determines if "Additional Information" needs to be added to the standard contents of the Summary Annual Report? For example, if a DB plan is less than 70% funded--does that information have to be included in the Summary Annual Report to participants?

Thanks.

Our firm has taken over a client whose document was previously updated for GUST and EGTRRA. For various reasons, we are restating their document to a prototype offered by the new investment provider.

We are confused about how to handle the EGTRRA amendment adoption. Do we use the effective date of the restated document, which will closely coincide with the adoption date?

Thanks for your help!

For 1/1/2004 DB valuations, is anyone using 90% of the weighted average of 30-year Treasuries to develop the Max ?

I thought PFEA of 2004 reset the allowable range to 90 - 100% of the weighted corporate blend ?

On June 16th the IRS issued an information letter to Mr Eugene Delgaudio in which it confirmed that under the Defense of Marriage Act the term spouse for the purpose of administering federal law, including the tax law, is defined as a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or wife. According to the IRS DOMA applies even if the state recognizes the union of two persons of the same sex as a legal marriage.

While the IRS letter answered the question of eligibility to file a joint tax return, the definition of spouse under DOMA will apply to those provisions of the IRC affecting benefits such as QDROs, contributions to a spouse's IRA, spousal rollovers, payments from an FSA and exclusion of health insurance premiums from income taxation. This means that a QDRO cannot be issued for benefits under an ERISA plan if the marriage is between members of the same sex legally married in Mass or Canada. While spousal death benefits will not be required for plans subject to ERISA (e.g., J & S annuity), there is no prohibition against an employer providing such benefits for same sex couples under a qualified plan subject to ERISA provided the applicable nondiscrimination rules are complied with. (Note: the value of the survivor benefits will be considered a taxable gift of the employee or a taxable transfer by the employee under the federal estate tax.)

We have a situation wherein employees of a noncontrolled group employer that did not adopt Plan A were permitted to participate in Plan A. They began participation on 1-1-04. This was recently discovered. To correct this, we decided to distribute the deferrals made by the employees of the ineligible employer. There are some employees of the ineligible employer that rolled over funds into Plan A. The service provider is saying that no only will the distributed deferrals be taxed, but that the rolled-over funds will be taxed as well since it is outside the 60-day window to rollover.

Thoughts? Suggestions?