my husband has been in an intensive care unit for 111 days. i filled out for ssi over 3 months ago, we have three small children and no disability insurance at work. i don't understand why it is taking so long to approve his case. he has botulism and the prognosis is long term rehabilitation approximately 1-2 years. are there any other options that we may be referred to? also could you explain to me how a person could be a county employee for 9 years and not have long term or short term insurance. what about fmla through his blue cross blue shield insurance?

is an arkansas county employee covered by long term or short term disability after being an active employee for 9 years. or is there any other program that would financially help?

I understand that for ERISA covered plans, employee contributions must be paid to the plan within a certain period of time (as soon as they can be reasonably segregated etc...). However, for a non-ERISA 403(B) plan, is there any time limit for employee contributions to be paid over to the plan. For example, is there potential liability if the employer holds the money for 30 days before turning it over? Are there any state or federal laws that could apply?

My firm is about to dissolve. All employees are being made offers of employment by a comnparable firm. First, what choices does our firm have for the surplus in its cafeteria plan, and what are the risks/benefits of each of those choices from the employer's and the employees respective perspectives? Do the answers depend on whether the new firm has a cafeteria plan or not or some other pension or welfare plan?

Second, given that this change in employers will happen in mid-January, should our firm not allow its employees to enter a flex plan this year under these circumstances?

Thanks for your input.

My father and mother are 64 and 60 years old. They have $100,000.00 in a Roth IRA converted from a Keogh Plan. Can they now take that money and buy a farm without any penalties?

Question:

Our firm has had a 401k program for about 5 years .Initially the Financial group educated the personnel on 401k plans and we all signed up.In the last 3-4 years the financial group's only direct communication is with the periodic reports as well as an on an line or phone call method of communication.I am concerned that the common man to the person, may be hurt during this period by basically not making correct decisions. With the stock market like it is ,i myself have been paying closer attention. Is it felt that a Financial group administering a 401k program should or should not have more periodic live contact ie meetings with the employees or not. Should the "They are old enough to make their own decisions" be good enough?When the only contact is to deliver the employee year end reports to the office manager for lunch it makes me wonder here. Perhaps their only obligation has been met. Do other financial groups have a more proactive approach or am i just concerned about nothing?

Any help here will be appreciated.

This has been an ongoing problem for almost a year now. My company takes out money from my paycheck for my 401K and it takes on average 60-90 days after the end of the month it was deducted from before it shows up into the plan.

As of today my last deposit was from September 1999. Now my company is in serious financial problems and I laid off last week. I asked about the 401k missing deposits and my HR manager said this "As you know the company is having financial problems.. once they company has caught up on their bills they will then deposit the 401k money." So it is plainly clear that they are using our 401k deductions to pay their bills and not put it into our 401k plan. I have already told the HR manager that I was informed she has 15 days after the end of the month to make the deposit and she says I am wrong.

What recourse do I have to recover interest on this money deducted? If the company files bankruptcy as it appears they will, what will happen to the last 4 months of money I had deducted from my paycheck?

Who do I need to contact about this? The DOL? The IRS? Any other organization?

Any help or information would be greatly appreciated! Thanks!

Does anyone know how to determine an estimate of the "required amount" to be contributed for a defined benefit plan (414h)?

For example:

Assume an individual is 42 years old and is eligible for a 20 year service retiree pension of 50% of final average salary. The employees final avg. salary is $80,000. Also the employee has contributed 5% of his yearly salary for only 15 years out of the 20 year period.

Is there a way to determine what the employees "required amount" in his pension account should be in order not to reduce his pension below 50%?

In addition, are there any good books and/or tables to help in calculating this?

Any insight would be helpful.

Thank-you.

1) Calendar year individually designed 401(k) Plan has an entry date of the January 1st following an hour of service.

2) There are a number of eligible participants in the Plan hired after 7/1/99 who chose not to defer for 2000.

3)Plan has been in existence for a number of years but 2000 is the first year that the Employer has made a match.

4) 1999 ADP for NHCE's is much better than 2000.

What do y'all think of the following regarding 2000 testing:

A) It appears that I cannot use a first year ACP of 3% since while this is the first year that a match is being made, this is not the first year that the Plan has contained provisions allowing a match.

b) Since this is an individually designed plan I can use current year for ACP and prior year for ADP.

C) I can restructure under the "old rules" for the ACP test using dual entry dates. Therefore, any Participant hired after 7/1/99 could be in a separate testing group since their satutorily required entry date would not have been until 1/1/2001. I could not use "new rule" restructuring because all of these individuals would have a year of service before 12/31/2000.

D) I can resturcture ACP without restructuring ADP (If this is incorrect, how do you restructure on prior year testing).

E) Are there any "consistency rules" requiring restructuring in the future?

Any thoughts or comments would be appreciated.

Looking for suggestions:

Employer wants to start 401(k) plan (no safe harbor, no razzle dazzle)for the benefit of the employees (not just a tax deduction for ER!)

Approx 15 employees - will experience 50% growth over next year.

All but 3 EEs are HCEs.

ER only wants discretionary contributions (based on profitability).

ER wants to maximize deferrals for EEs. (Emphasis here)

Anyone have any ideas (other than standard)? Thanks!

Can the owner of a company maintain a SEP/IRA, but start a 401 (k) Plan for his staff? He will not participate in the (k) Plan.

Any thoughts?

What is a 414(k) account? How does it work? What are the advantages and disadvantages? How is it treated with respect to coverage,participation, and general non-discrimination? What are the pitfalls?

I was wondering if others (especially those who work in the computer industry) would be willing to share the number of sick/personal/vacation or PTO days they offer. We're a tiny company setting up our first formal policy on sick/personal time.

Thanks,

Liss

The 5500s that I'm currently working on are for the plan year 7/1/99 through 6/30/00. Our document does not allow for short plan years. If a new plan's effective date is prior to 7/1/99 and no contributions were made prior to then, would it be acceptable to state 7/1/99 as the effective date on the 5500 to avoid filing a form with zero assets?

This is the current policy and I don't feel comfortable changing the plan effective date on the 5500.

If there are no assets/receivables for the plan, must a form be filed?

Would it be acceptable to file a first return for the 6/30/00 plan year if the plan's effective date was 3/1/99?

I have an interesting situation here. 401(k) plan was established effective 5/01/98 using a standardized prototype. 401(k) deferrals only. Document provides for discretionary matching, but none has ever been made. We have been retained to advise on correction of problems, which include:

1) Consistently late depositing of deferrals. In several cases, the deferrals were not deposited until participant terminated. The employer then made the deposit with earnings. How calculated, we have not been able to determine.

2) Form 5500 for initial plan year ending 4/30/99 was never filed. We put the 2000 form on extension, which is due 2/15/01.

3) The salary deferral amounts reported to us by the employer, contributions made to the money manager and deferral contributions do not match for either of the two years of the plan's existence. We do not know which numbers to use for reporting and testing purposes.

4) It looks like loan repayments for the principal were made with pretax dollars.

I'm considering VFCP for the late depositing of deferrals, VCR for the loan problem, if it exists, and mercy for the late 5500. Is there a better way? I've ever considered self-correction as much as possible course prior to terminating the plan. Problem is, a former participant has contacted the DOL, and an agent is now asking questions. The employer really wants to clear this up, as the company has been sold and the plan is terminating. Any thoughts?

A highly compensated ee defers more than 25% of pay. Do I have to include her "excess" deferrals in the (k) test. She is causing the test to fail and generating refunds for many of the highs. Thanks for your help.

We are currently in a severe cash-crunch and are considering asking key executives to take loans of $25,000 or more from their plan accounts to reloan to the firm for 90 days at a rate of 10% which will be paid directly by the firm back into their plan accounts. First is this legal and, if so, are there tax consequences?

Are there any special rules or regs regarding amending a 412(i) plan to a traditional non-412(i)defined benefit plan?? If so, is there a site i can reference?? Thanks.

I write payroll programs. I am confused about calculating tax on Cafeteria plan when it comes to the FICA max. Example, an employee makes $1500 a week, and his cafeteria is $100 a week. He is taxed $1400 for Federal, State, fica and medicare. When he hits the ficamax, should he continue to be taxed for fica on his ytd less cafeteria? So, if this year, he hits $80,400 in November, and has had $4000 deducted under cafeteria, should we stop taking any more fica, or keep going as if he was being taxed on 80,400 less 4,000? Does he need to pay the full $4984.40?

I am working with a company that has two separate plan docs for two separate divisions.

One of the divisions is going to be closing and terminating employment of all employees. They will fully vest all of these participants, but are asking if they will need to vest the other division employees as well.

For coverage testing etc. they are tested separately and on a combined basis.

My initial reaction would be that since it will be more than 20% of the workforce, that they would have to vest both divisions.

I have looked at partial term and term regs and nothing really addresses this type of situation.

Any help would be appreciated. Thank you.