It was recently discovered that a 401(k) plan failed to honor a participant's 2002 401(k) Catch Up Contribution election.

What is the proper correction?

I assume a QNEC, but for how much?

Thanks.

a physician is employed at a hospital & contributes the max to their 403b plan. they also do consulting on the side that has no relationship with their hospital empoyment and they earn NET $25k. can they implement a simple plan on that schedule C income ?

tim

What are the rules regarding unvested 403(b) contributions made by an employer to an employee's account. If an employee terminates and must relinquish the unvested portion of the 403(b), what are the general rules. Can they be returned to the employer's accounts or must they be used for the benefit of the employee's?

This is a Safe Harbor plan so virtually all terminated employees have an account balance....some also were making salary deferrals. We have no experience with this issue and don't know if they're entitled to their account balances and, if so, how is the reporting done? Thank you in advance.

Ok - Client has a 401(k) plan with deferral, match and non-elective contributions. Match formula is 100% up to 5% deferred. Client makes a 12.5% employer contribution every year per the plan document. Client wants to take 3% of the 12.5% and make it a safe harbor non-elective to pass the discrimination tests. Question is on the does the 3% SHNEC eliminate all discrimination tests, i.e. am I satisfying both ADP & ACP? If so, is it ok to keep the 100% up to 5% match (which is on a vesting schedule)?

Would it ever be possible for after-tax dollars to make it into a SIMPLE IRA? It seems that all employee deferrals and employer contributions would be and would always have been pre-tax and, since only SIMPLE IRAs can be rolled into SIMPLE IRAs, there doesn't appear to be any way for a person to have basis in a SIMPLE IRA. Is this correct or am I missing something?

Thanks for any input!

I just had an employer inquire about establishing different employer

contribution schedules for working dependent spouses that are eligible for

group coverage at their place of employment compared to non-working spouses.

This employer wants to eliminate spouses being covered by two employers.

The thought is that employer contributions for working spouses with access

to health coverage through their employer would be eliminated while

contributions for non-working spouses would continue.

Does anyone have any experience with this arrangement? Is it legal? If yes,

how would one go about setting this up correctly?

Any other suggestions apart from changing the dependent contribution levels

for all dependents?

Thanks,

Kevin Higgins

Does anyone have a spanish version of the safe harbor matching contribution notice?

Hello folks

I'm in my mid thirties and thinking of withdrawing some money out of my Roth to buy a house. This home purchase would be my first house. I have question regarding the tax consequence on such withdrawal. What would the IRS do to all the gains that I have in that Roth? Do they treat these gains as income or as capital gains. Most of my gains are short-term.

My concern is that they'll treat these short-term transactions as income on top of the 10% penalty for early withdrawal and that I also have to pay the estimated tax as well.

Last but not least, someone has once told me that if the withdrawal is to buy a primary residence or to pay for some medical emergency...will not be penalized. Is this true?

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Kenneth88

Currently, DB plan is frozen. Sponsor wishes to "unfreeze" the plan for current participants only. Assuming that there are no discrimination/coverage/(a)(26) issues, is this permissible? Assuming that it is, can it be done retroactively to allow service/benefit accruals for the prior plan year? Once again, assuming no discriminatin, coverage, etc. issues. Am I missing anything?

Thanks.

If I am preparing a 2002 Schedule T for the plan year 7/1/2002 - 6/30/2003, what is the compensation threshhold used to determine who is highly compensated (based solely on compensation, not 5% owners)?

I know that I must use the compensation earned from 7/1/2001 - 6/30/2002, but what amount makes an employee an HCE for purposes of the 2002 Schedule T?

Can anyone recommend any good 72(t) software? I've looked at BISYS, Imagisoft, Prescosoft and PenD'Calc.

If a company sponsoring a 403(b) plan merges with a company with a 401(k) plan, when does the 403(b) plan have to expand coverage to cover the other company's employees? Is there a 410(d)(6) rule for 403(b) coverage?

Assume a DB plan is being tested using the accrued to date method and a simple example of 30 NHCES with a Normal Accrual Rate of 1.1% who must be elevated to 1.3% to pass.

Assume the desired fix is to grant an increase in the accrued benefit of say $100. This would work if only the current year were being considered. But since I am testing on all past years, this gets divided among all years in the testing period and substantially diluted, right? Or is there some way around that?

The alternative might be to test using the annual method, in which case clearly I have only one year to fix. But there are data issues which make using the annnual method undesirable.

Is there any way around this need to fix all years in the testing period if the accrued to date method is used?

The usual tricks such as component testing are not available and banding, imputing, etc. have all been exhausted. I have limited options because my group is a small percentage of the total nonexcludables (controlled group situation with different plan year ends that cannot be permissively aggregated). I would pass average benefits easily but cannot get by the NCT.

I think I'm stuck but am grasping for straws.

Thanks for all the help. Here is the history and what we plan to do:

The original Roth was created in the last days of 2001 and for the year 2001. We will file a 5329 form and pay the 6% penalty on the RMD for 2001 and again the same for 2002. It is good that software is available to us to generate these forms for the specific years – which pub 590 calls for. As far as I can tell, the IRS offices have only forms for the year 2002.

But to the best of my ability, since the Roth has now been cashed out entirely, no penalty is assessed for this year.

If we have made any errors, please point them out to us.

I really don't understand the difference between a 401(a) and (k) plan. I hear people contribute to a 401(a) plan. Thanks...

The attachment is a genuine pleading from the Second District of New York.

Response.pdf

IN april of 2002 a financial planner set me up with a ROTH IRA. Basically he told me it was the right thing to do.

Silly me, I actually trusted this guy from a very reputable brokerage firm known nationwide and consistantly ranked in the top five.

I get a call from a new guy who said he had taken over my account (I assume the old guy was fired) and that I exceed the AGI allowed for a roth (married, 167,000K) OOPPS sorry about that!

I am supposed to call him on Monday.. Now I am stressing all weekend about this. I have about 10K in the account. If I recharacterize it to a traditional ROTH, what penality do I pay? Do I need to pay any tax on this?

I would like to get out of this as pain free as possible. I do not qualify for any of the reasons allowing early withdrawl as well.

Thanks, would love an answer before monday.. I am stressed out!

Can anyone recommend a COBRA software program for a 2,000 life group?

Thanks!

I have a company that has left a controlled group due to ownership change. All participants received a safe harbor notice for the plan of the controlled group. The departing company is going to copy the old plan. Will a new safe harbor notice need to be distributed?