I have a large plan and the auditor caught the fact that a participant who died 2 months after he was terminated was paid out at 100%. Should have been paid out  40%.  The 2 beneficiaries have already received their money.  Any options other than asking for the non-vested portion back from the beneficiaries, which likely will not work at all? 

I have a client that did not remit some salary deferral contributions deducted from  participant paychecks on a timely basis to the plan.  The excise tax was calculated, Form 5330 filed and the excise tax was paid.  It was subsequently discovered that the excise tax paid to the IRS was over stated by several thousand dollars.  Apparently close to half the late contributions were actually allocated to the plan on time.  Has anyone dealt with this issue before?  Can the excise tax over payment be recovered from the IRS?  Thank you.

Looking into a DB plan. Owner, spouse and an employee.

Owner is a financial advisor and has CLU, ChFC credentials.

I just cannot locate where it says covered/not covered. I remember reading something about this being an issue a few years back.

If you have any thoughts/references, would appreciate if you could share.

Thank you

If the participant has terminated service with the company and has a disability, what would be the correct code for the loan offset? The participant is under 59 1/2.

Thank you.

Is software needed to file a small plan form 8955-SSA, even if it is a paper form?  The IRS website has a pdf file but clicking on it the message comes up stating that my pdf viewer may not be able to display this type of document.  It then gives a link for the latest adobe, which I did and downloaded, and still will not display.  

Any thoughts or solutions are appreciated.

Below is the allocation formula for a profit sharing only plan provided to us by a plan sponsor.  The tiers are based on job classification.  The Tiers range from Tier 1 = trainees to Tier 9 = those who report directly to the board of directors.

What testing is required here - general testing? 

Hi,

A DB client left with owing four years or so in annual admin.  fees. (long time client, who kept saying each year, come on, after all these years you don't trust that I will pay you?). The new actuary is requesting a copy of the last valution report. While aware that per the code of professional conduct files cannot be held back due to outstanding fees, however, does this apply even to a val report that was previously provided to the client. Meaning is it permitted to say that being that this was previously provided to the client, if the client requests an additional copy he will first have to pay the outstanding fees ? Thank you.

I have a client that is deemed a tribal government that runs a casino. Their benefits plan covers both governmental employees and those who work in the casino. With the casino attribute I assume they need to follow ERISA law. For the Form 5500, do I only count those in the casino or all of the employees? 

Many thanks for your help. 

There was another thread that was super long on all of this stuff.  Curious to know if others agree that retirement contributions are almost certainly moot now with the 24 week period as opposed to 8 weeks?  Obviously a company that has been shut down since March is a different story, I'm talking about the for whom payroll over 24 weeks will exceed the amount needed for forgiveness.

I suspect that I already know what the best advice is going to be, but I'm hoping that someone can point me to something otherwise...

A new plan is starting up 7/1, and all employees will be eligible only if they have met the plan's service requirement of 1 YOS.  This requires the plan sponsor to review their records and see who actually worked 1,000 hours or more in a year for all employees... back to each of their hire dates, right?  There's no "only go back seven years" kind of cut-off?  The response I got was that they switched payroll vendors several years ago and purged records after seven years.

I'd normally try to remove the YOS requirement, but it's needed here because they're large enough with a relatively sizable ~10-15 hour per week staff such that if they included them all, it would put them over the audit threshold (yes, there are ways around that like multiple plans).  It seems like the best they can do is to take the records that they have, make notes that these are representative for the ones that they are consistent for, make notes for why they are including anyone who they think would have made 1,000 hours in any year, and keep the notes in their files.

Does anyone have a count of how many notices, statements, reports, and other disclosure items an individual-account retirement plan furnishes (or ought to have furnished) in a typical year?

Plan has a 4/30 year end.

For the plan year ending 4/30/2019 the ADP test fails, and a catchup eligible participant has a $3000 refund recharacterized as catch (for the 2019 plan year).

The participant had deferred $8600 from 1/1/2019 to 4/30/2019.

The participant then defers the full $16400 from 5/1/2019 to 12/31/2019.  Thus they have deferred the full catchup, and also had ADP refunds recharacterized as catchup.

Am I correct that the $3000 ADP recharacterization is now an excess deferral for 2019?

If so, is the correction to distribute the excess with gain/loss adjustment?  The participant does have an inservice distribution option available under the terms of plan.

Are there any further ramifications since the excess was not distributed by April 15, 2020?

Thank you.

Let's say there is $50 distribution fee charged to participants. Can a participant take out $100,000 (taxable distribution of $99,950 after the distribution fee) or $100,050 (taxable distribution of $100,000 after the fee)?

Thanks!

1. DC plans: have to wait at least 12 months to open a new plan to avoid successor plan issues. (or is it only applicable to 401k plan? Does the 12-months count from plan year end or plan termination date? )

2. DB plans: no waiting period in between. (but rumor says a client has to wait at least two years to open a new DB after terminating the old DB? any special rules or regulations regarding this? )

I'm aware that the IRS recently allowed remote notarizations and witnessing by plan representatives. I'm also aware that witnessing is required for spousal consent of non-QJSA distributions and loans from plans subject to the QJSA rules. What's confusing to me is that the IRS Notice refers to the relief being available to "participant elections, including spousal consent." Are any participant elections subject to the witnessing rule?

Thanks for your help.

We'd wondered how long the IRS is taking during this pandemic to process VCP applications, and thought others might be interested.  Here is data from one of ours:

January 23, 2019     submitted

June 11, 2019          acknowledgement from IRS

April 17, 2019           IRS requests additional information

May 18, 2019            We respond

May 19, 2020            VCP compliance statement (1 year after last contact)

Since FEMA declared a state of emergency for all 50 states due to Covid-19 does this mean that all participants of all 401k plans which allow for hardship withdrawals are eligible to take a hardship withdrawal pursuant to the following hardship withdrawal reason?:

"Expenses incurred on account of a federally declared disaster".

Thank you in advance for your guidance.

Some health insurance carriers are reducing premiums or providing rebates due to lower utilization of medical services so the issue arises whether the employer has to "share" the savings with employees.

My view is that these are essentially an advance payments of Medical Loss Ratio Rebates the insurers would normally be sending later in the year and therefore need to be "shared" with employees as we do with MLRRs.

Anybody taking a contrary position?

Thanks

My apologies if I missed this.

Has there been any rollover relief offered for participants who took their 2020 RMD in January and would like to roll back into the plan (or IRA)? 

I know they missed the 60 day rollover window, and don't fall under the April 1 to July 14 extension to July 15, but was wondering if I missed any further guidance on the January distributions.

Thanks very much.

I'm looking to see how others are handling the following:

The plan sponsor has a 401(k) Plan that provides a match formula equal to of 100% of the first 6% contributed.  The contributions are deposited semi-monthly.  Assuming the HCE has not received the maximum match allocation of $17,100 (6% of $285,000) at the time the compensation reaches the $285,000 limit, would the HCE be entitled to additional match allocations on deferral contributions for compensation earned over the $285,000 limit.  The plan has no true-up provision and the document defines the match determination period as "each payroll period" and not "the Plan Year".  Some people say the match allocation must stop when the compensation reaches to $285,000 limit.  Others say the match allocation can continue (up to the plan formula maximum) on compensation in excess of the $285,000 as long as there are corresponding deferral contributions.  

Should the match allocations stop or should they continue?