In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And Satan said, "It doesn't get any better than this."

And God said, "Let there be light," and there was light. And God said, "Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit," and God saw that it was good. And Satan said, "There goes the neighborhood."

And God said, "Let us make Man in our image, after our likeness, and let him have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth." And so God created Man in his own image; male and female created. And God looked upon Man and Woman and saw that they were lean and fit. And Satan said, "I know how I can get back into this game."

And God populated the earth with broccoli and cauliflower and spinach, green and yellow vegetables of all kinds, so Man and Woman would live long and healthy lives. And Satan created McDonald's. And McDonald's brought forth the 99-cent double cheeseburger. And Satan said to Man, "You want fries with that?" And Man said, "Supersize them." And Man gained 5 pounds.

And God created the healthful yogurt, that Woman might keep her figure that Man found so fair. And Satan brought forth chocolate. And Woman gained 5 pounds.

And God said, "Try my crispy fresh salad." And Satan brought forth Ben & Jerry's. And Woman gained 10 pounds.

And God said, "I have sent thee heart-healthy vegetables and olive oil with which to cook them." And Satan brought forth chicken-fried steak so big it needed its own platter. And Man gained 10 pounds and his bad cholesterol went through the roof.

And God brought forth running shoes and Man resolved to lose those extra pounds. And Satan brought forth cable TV with remote control so Man would not have to toil to change channels between ESPN and ESPN2. And Man gained another 20 pounds.

And God said, "You are running up the score, Satan." And God brought forth the potato, a vegetable naturally low in fat and brimming with nutrition. And Satan peeled off the healthful skin and sliced the starchy center into chips and deep-fried them. And he created sour cream dip also.

And Man clutched his remote control and ate the potato chips swaddled in cholesterol. And Satan saw and said, "It is good." And Man went into cardiac arrest. And God sighed and created quadruple bypass surgery.

And Satan created HMOs.

Hi! I am trying to do DFE filing for Master Trust. Any ideas where there is an information website that gives EIN #s for Investment Funds.

Anyone know the EIN # for Putnam International Trust Fund and/or Wells Fargo Tilted US Tactical Asset.

I am currently living in my first home.. I didn't use myIRA to purchase it... I've purchase some land and am planning on building my new home on it... I will sell this current home and use the equity to go towards the construction loan for the new home...

I am also considering using one of my IRA accounts to help bring down my mortgage payments. I will use this money to pay for the fence surrounding the property and a few other things. The property is five acres...

My questions are:

Will I be penalized for withdrawing the money?

Will I have to pay taxes on the money???

The way that I figure it... If I can use it to lower my motgage payments, I will save a lot on the interest in those payments...

Kind of like, using money from your savings account to pay off a credit card, instead of making those monthly credit card payments, only to keep earning 3.4% off your savings account...

Please give your input..

Thanks!

S. Wilson

Per te EBIA ERISA Compliance for Health & Welfare Plans guidebook, mega-wrap or umbrella plan documents combining a variety of welfare plans (permitting one 5500 filing in lieu of several) are supposed to be adopted prospectively only. Does this mean the plan must be in place as of the first day of the plan year for which combined reporting will occur, or is it still prospective if adoption occurs anytime during that year, and is retroactive to the first day of the plan year?

Situation exists where qualified trust is the designate beneficiary. Participant was therefore able to look though the trust and use the oldest beneficiary (beneficiary with shortest life expectancy) to determine RMD ( MRD)

The participant dies this year ( OVER 70 1/2 AND ALREADY TAKING RMD). I know the RMD for this year is still calculated on a joint life expectancy- however, for the next and subsequent years, whose life expectancy is used to calculate post death distributions?

That of the deceased, as would be the case had the trust not been qualified or

The identifiable individual under the trust? Since the trust was the 'designate beneficiary as determine by 401(a)(9)-4 Q-5?

Thanks

I recently started a 401k account which showed up on my w-2 as

deferred income, maybe box23? My question is how can my village where I live tax that income now, but they don't tax additional money I put into a defined contribution pension? When I retire how would I pay city tax and how would they be able to keep tract of the money and where it came from? Any help would be appreciated.:confused:

63 year old participant dies. Has 3 beney's Wife gets 50%, D1 gets 25% and D2 gets 25%. I want to make sure I understand when distributions must begin under 401(a)(9). ( The document seems to pretty much justs restates the Code rules). From my understanding three options as to the timing of the distribution:

1. Beney's may elect to take installment distributions over their respective lives. The distributions would have to begin no later than the first year following the year of the participant's death.

2. Beney's may elect to take a lump sum distribution. The distribution would have to be made no later than the end of the fifth year following the year of the participant's death.

3. Beney may elect to commenece annuity distributions by the end of the year in which the participant would have turned 70 1/2 years of age.

Am I understanding the timing rules correctly? Tahnks in advance for any help.

My Oklahoma firm is trying to update our compensation scale, and I am trying to get a feel for what a realistic salary range would be for the following 125 job titles:

125 Administrator: 5 or more years experience in selling our administration service to prospective clients, conducting employee enrollments, corresponding with company owners or decision makers.

125 Assistant: 3 to 5 yrs experience setting up new plans, submitting billing for clients, preparing form 5500 at yearend, answering more detailed questions from policy holder payroll or human resource departments.

125 Clerk: 3 yrs or less experience in manually imputing reimbursement claims, processing reports, cutting reimbursement checks, and answering day to day questions from participants.

Please let me know what you think a reasonable pay range would be for these job descriptions and any criteria you think is significant. Also list in your response what part of the country you are from.

Thanks for your assistance.

A judge issued a DRO in the mid-90's. The spouse is just notifying the plan sponsor now, in 2001. The participant is still active in the plan. What action should the plan sponsor take when the DRO is received from the spouse?

What's your take on ees who don't draw comp from the employer? Include in testing & IRS counts or not?

Assume an employer has had a PPO and a POS option for his employees. Up until now, the POS participants had not had to pay anything toward premiums, but the PPO participants do. A premium only plan is in place for the deduction of premiums. If an employee did not elect PPO coverage, he was automatically defaulted into the POS coverage. Now, due to rising costs, the employer is going to have employees in the POS contribute a portion of the premiums on a pretax basis under the premium only plan. Must the employer allow the employees the opportunity to opt out of coverage under the health plan now that a premium is required from the employees under the POS? Can the employer require an employee to show proof of other coverage if he wants to opt-out, and if no proof is shown default him into the POS with a payroll deduction? Or, can the employer allow the employee to opt-out with no other coverage whatsoever?

State law requires that an employee's written consent be obtained before any type of payroll deduction can be taken. Do you think that ERISA would preempt this law, and if so, on what basis? How do you take a payroll deduction without written consent if the employee is defaulted into the coverage?

Let me explain my situation 1st.

Both myself and my husband I have had continuous insurance coverage with my employer for the last 10 years. This year in Jan, 2001 my husband began a new job. At open enrollment we chose to also put both of us on his plan too, and this was because his plan had coverage (infertility) for something we needed as what not covered through my employer.

In June of this year my husband had to quit his job due to a health problem. We were told we were eligible for COBRA insurance and so we decided to continue coverage through COBRA with his plan so we could continue our infertility treatment.

My questions are:

1. Is this legal to continue COBRA coverage if we are also continuing our coverage with my employer too? Is this dual coverage allowable.

2. If it is allowable, which plan is primary and which is secondary? If Cobra is secondary, must I 1st submit infertilty claims to the primary even though my primary is an HMO paln and am going out of state for treatment, and also that I know the primary wil pay nothing at all for infertilty anyway?

Thanks for your responses in advance.

Kelly

We have established a cap on our flexible benefit plan. We do not use this as a spending account. This plan is basically for pre-tax for medical & child care. Does anyone know how the cap was established? I am the one and only in human resources and the prior employee did not leave any information as to how this amount was derived.

Any help is appreciated.

We just took over a profit sharing plan that has its investments pooled with a brokerage firm. The Valuation Date is the last day of the plan year. The client typically pays terminated particpants out several months after the Val. Date. Can someone point me to any irs ruling on the timing of payouts and Valuation Dates. Lets assume 6 or 7 months has passed, and the document is silent on the timing of the re-valuation of participant balances.

What do most people do? Pay out on previous Val Date or do an interim valuation?

Thanks

I am being rehired after a job elimination (2 years have gone by). I want to know if the 4 years and 9 mos of prior service can be credited towards vesting?

A participant in a group health plan via a Sec. 125 cafeteria plan switched (outside of open enrollment - the insurer made an exception for her) from a HMO option to a PPO option, in order to obtain coverage for 'natural childbirth' benefits. After the child was born, the employee added the child as a dependent under the PPO, then asked if she could switch back from the PPO, to the HMO, because the PPO was too expensive to maintain.

My understanding is that the birth of the child created a late enrollment event allowing the employee to add the child to *existing* coverage, but that switching back to the HMO is not permissible under the irrevocable election concept.

Would the answer be different if the employee held off on adding the child as a dependent, unless and untill the employer could guarantee the switch back to the HMO??

Our law firm is considering purchasing a proposal program for qualified retirements plans so that we can do quick plan proposals for new clients. We have only looked at a few, but it appears that two of the better programs are Relius Proposal and Datair's Proposal component for their Defined Contribution System.

Is anyone familiar with either of these programs? Would you suggest any other programs? Any comments would be greatly appreciated.

Aloha

Our law firm is considering purchasing a proposal program for qualified retirements plans so that we can do quick plan proposals for new clients. We have only looked at a few, but it appears that two of the better programs are Relius Proposal and Datair's Proposal component for their Defined Contribution System.

Is anyone familiar with either of these programs? Would you suggest any other programs? Any comments would be greatly appreciated.

Aloha

Our law firm is considering purchasing a proposal program for qualified retirements plans (so that we can do quick plan proposals for new clients). We have only looked at a few, but it appears that two of the better programs are Relius Proposal and Datair's Proposal component for their Defined Contribution System.

Is anyone familiar with either of these programs? Would you suggest any other programs? Any comments would be greatly appreciated.

Aloha

My understanding is that a Plan has a great deal of flexibility w/r/t the definition of compensation for determining accd benefits. i.e. for example, it can include 401(k) deferrals or exclude them.

However, for discrimination testing there are strict guidelines w/r/t the definition of compensation. i.e. 414(s) definition.

Is my understanding on target?