A "self employed" individual wants to establish a qualifed retirement plan. This person currently has a traditional IRA and wants to roll the money into a qualified plan to invest in certain investments which are not a permitted investments in an IRA.

This individual has retired, and while he may do some limited consulting work on a very intermittent basis, he is not actively employed. Therefore, it is possible that in some years he may have income from self employment, but in other years he may not. It is anticipated that no contributions other than the initial rollover will be made to the qualified plan.

Can this person establish a qualified retirement plan?

Is anyone aware of a requirement that a "self-employed" individual must be actively engaged in a trade or business or have income from self employment in order to estabish a plan?

Thanks!

Assume a client has a 401(k) and money purchase plan with both plan years ending 12/31. The money purchase plan has a once a year allocation to participants employed on 12/31. The employer wishes to merge the plans in order to take advantage of the EGTRRA changes which allow increased employer deductions of contributions to a profit sharing plan.

When should the merger be effective? 12/31/01 or 1/1/02? Can the final money purchase plan allocation that is due as of 12/31/01 be made after the effective date of the merger? Any other issues?

is there any reason- regs or otherwise - that prohibit or restrict and employer from having an integrated DB and an integrated DC plan?

We are selling one of our operating units back to the former private owner. The private owner is implementing benefit plans for the employees as of the sale date.

Do we need to offer COBRA?

I earn a small amount for a company that contributes to my sep. My wife is retired and does not earn any money. Can I open a Roth for her and contribute to it? What is the maximum amount I can contribute to her Roth?

It is well defined under 403(B) plans that a parsonage allowance is allowed under withdrawals - 107.

Has the IRS made any opinions available to how this would be treated if a church plan has a 401(k) plan?

Barry

Does anybody have access to a spreadsheet-based enrollment form that I can post on my company's intranet to collect open enrollment information from employees? We have people in multiple locations across the country. I need to quickly collect life, AD&D, health (including HMO's), dental, vision and long-term care enrollment data from all employees.

Thanks for your help.

Would an employer's in-house administration of a medical expense reimbursement component of a Sec. 125 plan be subject to HIPAA privacy regulations, when (and if) they go into effect??

I work with a tribe who wants to consider self funding medical, dental, and visual care. Does anyone know of any significant tribe who self funds. Also, do you know any "Brand Name" companies who self fund. I am trying to indicate that it is not an unusual practise.

With many church plans looking to move to a 401(k) plan, what thoughts does anyone have regarding parsonage allowance rules under 401(k) plans?

What are the rules regarding an employer contribution to a safe harbor plan - above and beyond the match. ie Can employer contribute 5% of employee W-2 on top of employer match?

S Corp sponsors an ESOP that owns more than 50% but less than 100% of the Company. The company has some non-employee shareholders and must (or has decided to) pay dividends so that the shareholders will have cash to pay taxes.

The Company wants to amend the ESOP allocation formula so that the amount of contributions allocated to a participant's account is reduced by the amount dividends allocated to the account. For example, each participant would receive 5% of compensation minus the dividends (but not below zero). The end result is that each active participant's account receives a total of 5% of compensation in contributions or dividends.

Is there any reason why this type of allocation formula would cause a qualification issue or create a prohibited transaction?

For purposes of discussion, ignore forfeitures and top-heavy considerations and assume that the plan complies with 401(a)(4) and 410(B) in operation (not including dividends in the test). If a participant's account receives dividends equal to more than 5% of compensation, the account still keeps the dividends.

Can an employer excludes all collectively bargained employees from an employee stock purchase plan and still qualify under Section 423? The employer will offer this plan to all of its non-union employees.

Hi,

I would like to invest in Roth IRA to get some tax benifits. But, I am not sure I am going to stay in USA till my retirements. I may go back to my home country after a few years.

In that case, can I claim all the money I saved in Roth IRA? Are there any penalties involved if I claim my money before retirement?

Any information in this regard would be greately appreciated.

Thanks

Murthy

I have a Plan where the company can no longer maintain a SIMPLE 401(k) Plan. The company was doing 100% match on the first 3% deferred.

The company can no longer make the SIMPLE matching contributions. Hence the company plans on freezing the Plan until things got better.

If freezing was allowed do you then go back to top heavy testing and when can you re-freeze it?

Something tells me that you can not freeze a SIMPLE 401(k) Plan. One would first have to convert the SIMPLE to a regular 401(k) Plan as of the next January 1 and once you convert it to a regular 401(k) plan would you be able to freeze the Plan.

I would appreciate if one could share their experience if they have run into a similar situation or guide me in the right direction.

Thank you.

Please clarify the use of Rev Proc 2001-57...

My understanding is that ALL 401(k) plans, regardless of document type, must sign the "Good Faith" amendments prior to their effective date (1/1/02).

Please give ideas of how your TPA is handling this issue.

Thank you in advance!

:confused:

Imagine for a moment that you have invited a number of state legislators to a dinner where you will have their undivided attention. What would you ask them for? As we ask ourselves this question we find that most of the legislation we would want to modify exists at the Federal level. Fortunately, our trade association program is located in the state of Pennsylvania so as yet there are no burdensome state health care mandates to deal with. Therefore, apart from preventing some of the measures taken in other states (e.g. Maryland health care mandates or New York’s small group reform) we can find little to change. Hopefully some of you out there have issues that you would raise given an audience with legislators and can take the time to share this information with me.

A participant took out a hardship distribution, cashed the check, paid the taxes and penalties. She took the distribution to use towards downpayment of primary residence and the closing fell through. Now she would like to redeposit the money into the plan and have the taxes credited back to her account. It seems impossible to me. Does anyone have any experience with a similar situation?

I take it that a SIMPLE is considered a "retirement plan" for puposes of the rules related to IRA contribution/ deduction and active participation in a retirement plan. Opinions to the contrary?

Our payroll processing company, The Business Office, has been asked by a number of clients who want to install a program referred to as the Health Incentive Plan or HI Plan.

We are aware of the warnings put out by many benefits and tax experts against using the version of the HI Plan that is marketed by the Redwood Group (TRG) and are lead to believe that the IRS and state Depts. of Insurance will be taking action against that plan.

However, these clients want to use the HI Plan from Burns & Assoc. and not the TRG version and further indicated the Burns plan is the original HI Plan and has a patent pending.

Has anyone had any feedback or opinions from legal advisors on the Burns HI Plan? Our clients have favorable opinions from their legal advisors and we have not been able to get any negative responses from the sate DOI that we contacted nor the IRS.