An insurance agency says that its employees are statutory employees, but pays them W-2 income instead of 1099 income.  Their W-2s consist entirely of commissions and they all work from home.  They work as they wish - essentially as independent contractors - but are paid a W-2 income.  Is the agency able to exclude them from their 401(k) plan?  It seems that most statutory employees who get paid 1099 income may not be considered eligible employees, but I couldn't find information that discusses how eligibility is handled when their income is reported on a W-2.  Has anyone come across a situation like this?  

Sometimes a question comes up that I should know the answer to and my mind is staring at me blankly.

Is the Special Tax Notice required to be provided to a participant requesting an in service distribution? I think the answer is an unequivocal yes.

good luck. simply print out the song list on the second page and enter the number of the song in the corresponding yellow box. It will tell you whether you made a good guess or not.

Scrooge told me to wish you a Bah Humbug as well.

christmas_puzzles__130_to_solve.xls

A company was sold through an asset sale.  The retirement plan was not addressed in the agreement.  All employees started with the new owner on 12/1.  We received a rollover check for a participant with a balance in the old employer's plan.  The new owner has not set up a plan and I do not see anything being set-up for 90 days.  Do you think I am okay processing the rollover check into the old plan?  The rollover was initiated prior to 12/1, however, technically the old plan now has no active employees, so I am questioning if a former employee can make a rollover into the plan.  

A unique situation for the participant, who was not aware the company was in the process of selling.  I would like to process the rollover, but what I like and what is correct may be different in this circumstance.  

Thank you.

ASPPA is giving me the runaround.   Iasked them this questions twice and no one has returned my e-mail.

My co-worker took the practice test for the QKA1 exam.  How can he see the question-by-question results?  All he can see is the overall score.

Employer hates loans and wants to stop offering them.  Does he need to wait until all outstanding loans have been paid off, or are those loans fine retaining the loan policy in place at the time of the promissory note?

Hi

100% owner Joe marries Jane who has 2 adult children from prior marriage (ignore the 1 year rule)

Joe refers to them as his step-daughters.

Jane and the 2 daughters work for Joe's company.

Jane is an HCE by attribution.

How about step-daughters?

In one case assume they are adopted and in another they are non-adopted.

Any other scenarios?

Thank you

We had a participant who meant to defer his compensation until 2022, but he accidentally entered 2099.  This was clearly a mistake, as he will be well over 150 years old in 2099.  I know there is no real way to accelerate payments once the schedule is set (outside those listed in the regs, which we've already ruled out or otherwise explored), but are there any exceptions where the election was clearly, on its face, a mistake?

We have a client that wants to provide a Safe Harbor Match plan for their employees.  They also want to exclude the HCE's from the Safe Harbor Match, which the is allowable.  However, they would like to give the HCE's a less generous Non Safe Harbor match.  At first glance, It looks like this would be okay because they're giving a better benefit to the nonHighly's.  However, someone in the office believes that this would kick in the ACP test.  Are there any other issues?

Participant, former employee, died this year.  She was taking RMDs.

Can the 2021 RMD check be made payable to the estate?

Does anyone have some insight on how we could remedy excess 402(g) deferral after the employee has separated service and transferred their account to an IRA?  I'm wondering if the IRA can be used to return the assets or if it would have to come from the original 401(k)?

Trading on margin in qualified retirement accounts is considered debt-financed income and therefore leads to UBTI (unrelated business income tax) / UBIT.

Many other forms of leverage (futures, short sales, gains from lapse or termination of short options, repurchase agreements, notional principal contracts) are either explicitly exempt in the code from generating UBTI, or don't generate UBTI by virtue of entailing no borrowing of money in the traditional sense.

What about using the proceeds from options sales (for example options box spreads) on a rolling basis to buy additional equities, will it generate UBTI? Is it debt-financed income, as the short options create an obligation (albeit the size of the future obligation depends on the performance of the underlying); or not, as (by the same argument that applies to futures) it does not entail borrowing money in the traditional sense?

I've been driving myself crazy on this. Question came up as to whether an in-plan Roth conversion/rollover could satisfy the RMD requirements. I know it can't, but I'm having a devil of a time finding "proof" - and I'm sure it is staring me in the face! I recalled that there was guidance a long time ago where it said that for 401(a) purposes, an in-plan rollover was not a "distribution." So I looked back at IRS Notice 2010-84, etc., etc., and while I found SOME of what I was looking for, I couldn't find anything that confirmed this head-on -  (or possibly my eyes scanned over it). Anyone recall the citation for this? There's ample IRS verbiage out there that addresses this in an IRA context, but seems to be a dearth of similar IRS publications answering this same question for designated Roth accounts.

Shoulda stayed in bed this morning...

if a plan has a large number of employees and for sending out the annual sar and disclosure notices, would it be possible to upload these documents to the companies ADP port hole site where all employees have access and mail out a letter to each person and let them know these documents are out on the ADP port hole for their retrieval if they would like to print or review?

We are looking at taking on a new client for 2022.  They have an existing 401k plan; non-safe harbor.

In reviewing the adoption agreement and plan document, the current TPA drafted an amendment in 2021 that provided a waiver of eligibility for one specific NHCE participant.   

The reason being is that participant was allowed into the plan before they were eligible (not eligible until 1/1/2022) and made salary deferrals to the plan in 2021.

I've never heard of this approach of a waiver for a single NHCE employee; thoughts?

Wife owns 100% of a recently acquired business. Husband owns 89% of his business with 11% unrelated owner(niece).  Minor child age 15.   Wife  on husband's payroll but will remove to limit the  only block to the spousal exception being the minor child. One piece I read by a major insurer indicated that if the parent(husband in this case) ownership was less than 80% there would be no problem(i.e., spousal exception could apply). I think in this situation, that unless the father's interest goes down to 50% or less, the child still has effective control of both  businesses(>50%) by attribution and there is effective control of each corp by five or fewer individuals.  Is my reasoning correct here? 

A related question is when determining controlling interest post family attribution, do you count the attributed ownership more than once so that the total ownership can be more than 100%? I have not seen any examples that show how this is done.

Thanks in advance for any responses?

Hi,
My Company was acquired and the acquiring Organization which is my current company has provided a new 401k Plan from different provider. I want to withdraw the 401k, can I do it  (or) should I mandatory rollover to the new 401k Provider

I have the formula to calculate a 'regular' EBAR.  That is, not including permitted disparity.

Where can I find the formula for the permitted disparity? 

Does anyone have excel formulae to calculate either the EBAR given the contribution, or the contribution given the EBAR?

Son is 100% owner of corp, father over 70 ½ has been taking RMDs since 70 ½.

Father owner by attribution, new broker advising him the father does not need to take RMD because he is not an owner, and he is still working.

I think it would have been in best interests of client for broker to keep his mouth shut before volunteering info to client w/o checking with TPA first?