Can a minister participate in a cafeteria plan? Can he or she receive reimbursements from a 105 medical reimbursement plan? The minister receives a W-2, but is subject to the payment of self-employment taxes.

Are P.S. 58 Costs taxable each year in a nonqualified deferred compensation plan as they are in a qualified plan? If so, how are taxable P.S. 58 Costs reported each year? If not, how do P.S. 58 costs affect a nonqualified deferred compensation plan (or do they not have any effect)?

I have an employer who had their own 401(k) plan through 06/30/02. They became part of a PEO and it's multiple employer plan on 07-01-02.

When performing the ADP / ACP testing for 2002 do they have two tests or one?

I don't have all the info. on the change but they instructed us they merged into the PEO's multiple employer plan in mid year.

I'm of the opinion its the employer's plan and all contributions for the entire year must be tested as one, but I'm not sure becuase they left to go to the PEO and adopted thier plan. The PEO is telling them to have us test the first six months and they will test the last six months. I may be way off base but this doesn't seem right to me.

They are also top-heavy for 2002 and I would certainly think they are required to make a top-heavy contribution for the full year.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Will be funding a Roth IRA for the year 2002. I am not sure if a local saving bank ( TCF ) would be a good place to place this account. I would also like some info. on a good rate of interest on this type of account.

thank-you

Must a financial advisor qualify as an investment manager under ERISA (e.g., be a registered investment advisor) in order to exercise investment discretion over a participant's account in an ERISA-covered plan? I have my own thoughts but would appreciate any thoughts or experiences you may have.

Has anyone had any experience with an employee failing to notify the employer that he had filed an 83(B) election and the consequences of such failure for the employer and the employee? In our situation, the employer was not notified that an employee had filed an 83(B) election; therefore, the employer failed to report W2 taxable income for the employee, and the employee failed to pay taxes for such income. How does the employer correct this mistake? What are the tax consequences for the employer and the employee in this situation? Thanks.

We have a balance forward 401(k) plan that has company stock. Participants are allowed to change investment allocations quarterly which is clearly spelled out in the SPD. Am I understanding the new rules correctly that they would not have to provide any black-out notices?

Can a non-owner employee who is over age 70 1/2 participate in a SIMPLE IRA. I can not find anything other than the IRA rules apply.

A plan has a discretionary match based on "a percentage of a participant's deferral contributions." The plan has a last day of the plan year employment requirement for the match.

The employer decides to match 50% of all deferrals. Is there any reason that the minutes have to be in place by the end of the year? Since you are "following" the discretionary formula I don't see any "cut-back" issues (like there might be if you tried to impose a "cap" if one did not exist in the document) if you decide on the match sometime in January or February. I have a TPA insisting that the minutes must be in place by 12/31.

On a related issue I am now seeing documents where the discretionary match is based a percentage of the participant's deferrals, but the document specifically provides that the employer also has the right to a discretionary "cap." This is a major protype provider. I guess the IRS saw no "definitely determinable" issue here? I noted some prior discussion on this board stating that you could not have discretion in both the matching percentage and the cap because of definitely determinable concerns.

We have several 401(k) plans that have a 500 hour requirement for allocation purposes. The EGTRRA amendment was adopted in December, 2002. I understand that for purposes of the allocation, we must limit compensation to $170,000 in order to avoid 411(d)(6) issues but for discrimination testing purposes can we use $200,000?

Can an employer prepay an employer contribution, put it into an employee account (not a pooled account, a segregated account under the employee's name) and then withdraw that amount if it comes to pass that the amployee is not eligible to receive the contribution (due to last day rule. etc.)? The employer will not take the money back out of the plan, they plan to move it around to other employees who will be due the employer contribution in question.

If the plan doc says that only employees with 500 hours get a contribution, isnt it a defect to put money in an employees account at the beginning of the year?

cites would be helpful if anyone has any

thanks a lot

Has anyone had any experience with an employee failing to notify the employer that he had filed an 83(B) election and the consequences of such failure for the employer and the employee? In our situation, the employer was not notified that an employee had filed an 83(B) election; therefore, the employer failed to report W2 taxable income for the employee, and the employee failed to pay taxes for such income. How does the employer correct this mistake? What are the tax consequences for the employer and the employee in this situation? Thanks.

Can you calrify the family attributin rule? We have a few interpretations floating around but we're not sure which is correct:

1) Grandparent owners can attribute ownership to grandchildren

2) Owner can attribute ownership up to grandparents

Question: At what point is the minority valuation discount for an ESOP eliminated? Background facts:

ESOP owns 42% of company (including voting) stock.

Other minority owners (not related to majority owner) own 3% of company stock. Majority owner owns 55% of company stock which is in NE. Majority Owner is in mid-70's and works less than 50% of time. Executives within company make almost all op decisions. Majority owner has a written retirement plan with the company to sell his stock to the ESOP upon his retirement (plan indicates written notice should be given by CFO to ESOP of election of owner to retire). Majority owner has announced his decision to employees (not in writing) to retire within 18 mos and requests all processes be initiated to make that happen (he has initiated an MAI full appraisal on the property-costs split between ESOP and Owner, meetings have been held between attorneys for owner and ESOP, outside valuation experts have prepared a valuation on the business, a sale/transfer date has been verbally agreed to by all parties to be 5/2003). Based on situation facts and since control transfer has been verbally agreed to, can the ESOP valuation for 12/31/02 be valued without a discount? Thanks for any help.

Is it possible for an employee to make SIMPLE and work for a separate employer and make contributions to that plan as well?

Company A's 401(k) PS Plan currently requires 1 Yr of Service, 1,000 hours for eligibility. Plan Entry date is the first day of the year in which eligibility requirements are fulfilled. Thus, entry is retroactive. Company A would like to amend its plan such that Entry Date is now the following January 1 or July 1.

Will such an amendment only affect those hired after the date of amendment, or will those existing employees as of the date of amendment who have not yet fulfilled the 1 yr, 1,000 hours be subject to the new Entry Date as well?

Thanks.

This is the closest forum I thought would be approriate to post this message.

For a Volume Submitter plan document, what was the deadline for amending for OBRA '93's $150k comp limit?

Please help me! I have a legal research problem. I have a scenario with a couple that has a prenuptial agreement. The prenup provided that if the couple ever separated they would waive and give up any right to inherit assets from the estranged spouse. The husband contributed to a Federal Government sponsored savings plan and named his wife as sole beneficiary. the couple separated. The husband died 3 months later. Does the wife still get the proceeds from the savings plan?

In the scenario, the sister shows up and says that the government inteds to pay the proceeds to the wife.

Can anyone give me any hint as to where I can find information on whether or not the wife gets the proceeds?

What do you do if your corporate bank won't accept a check cut from a pension trust accout for 20% withholding tax?

We have a separate EIN for trust and preprinted Form 8109 with trust #

My recollection is that you can use corporate EIN # to remit taxes as an alternative.

Could check be cut to Trustees and deposited in Corporate account and then cut cut from Corproate account to federal depository bank

Can we use a blank Form 8109B to remit taxes?

There's a DB plan whose only employees and participants are the two owners. They have identical salary and service histories. Their PVVABs are even identical as their DOBs are just a few weeks of each other. The combined PVs exceeded the total plan assets when their 414k elections became effective. Must they each sign an election to waive a portion of their benefits to make their PVs equal to the value of the assets even though there are no other participants, or is this not allowed? I vaguely remember hearing some time ago that owners cannot waive benefits.

Also, the 414k elections became effective two and a half months into the plan year (plan has EOY val date). Would it be acceptable to not establish formal PVs as of the effective date of the elections and just split the assets down the middle at the EOY? FMVs for the assets as of the elections' date would be hard to come by, but it's obvious that contributions would have not been required at any time during the year. All help is appreciated.