NOIT went out in December 2017 for a 1/31/18 plan term date.  Plan anniversary was March 1.  Plan has been frozen since 2006.  When the new rates went  into effect March 1 the plan was more underfunded than the client anticipated.  They took a couple months to figure out if they were going to go ahead with the plan term.  Now they want to move forward and we're past the 180 days to file the PBGC 500.  They really want to get it paid out by year end but especially by PYE.  Its not clear to me what the options are.  I see where you can change the proposed term date - but not more than 90 days.  So have we missed that window too?  Has anyone been in this situation?  Is there anything we can do at this point other than start over?

Sole proprietor wants to make contribution by contributing stock that he already owns to the retirement plan.  Without regard to the wisdom of doing so, is it even permissible?  

Thanks in advance for any guidance. 

A potential client has a DB plan in place with another TPA. They now want to start a 401k using my company as the TPA. My understanding is that the 401k plan will be for employees who were formerly contract(1099) employees and are now W-2 employees. None were ever in the DB plan. What do I have to be careful of in setting this plan up? Also. what are the testing issues involved?

If a DB plan has already been amended for PPA and is terminating now, prior to the end of the PPA restatement period, and before our document provider has the PPA documents available, does it still need to be restated for PPA?

Have you ever had a situation in which you did not want to provide your usual service of electronic submission of a client’s Form 5500 report because you believe the report your client instructs you to submit would include a false statement?  (Your draft was accurate and correct, but your client tells you to change an answer to one that is false.)

How did you handle the situation?

If you haven’t faced this situation, how would you handle it?

Does a submitter have any responsibility for whether its client makes a truthful report?

We were recently contacted by a doctor, who received a CP214 Letter in February this year.  His mother, who recently passed, took care of filing the 5500 EZ for him.  Neither the doctor or the accountant have been able to find copies of the prior filings.  Would submitting the IRS Form 4506 be the only way to obtain a copy or is there another option?

This was in the news today:

Two prominent NFL owners have a stake in a bookmaker as the first season with expanded legal sports betting in the U.S. gets ready to kick off.

New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft and Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones have retained their investments in DraftKings, sources confirmed to ESPN, even as the company has shifted some of its focus from daily fantasy to traditional sports betting.

Kraft's and Jones' stakes in DraftKings are said to be small: less than 5 percent, according to sources. In a court disclosure, 21st Century Fox was the only company listed as owning 10 percent or more of DraftKings.

A Cowboys spokesman said Jones' investment in DraftKings is through sports hospitality company Legends, not the team. Jones and the Steinbrenners, owners of the New York Yankees, have been described as "principal owners" of Legends.

The Patriots declined comment

See, it's ok because

I'm doing some research for one of my clients and have a couple of regulatory-related questions regarding multiple employer plans, and plan terminations and conversions. I've pored through regulations, but I'm getting dizzy and could use some help. Here goes:

1. Can you 'convert' a plan from a single employer plan to a different structure like a MEP (and eventually, when/if made legal, a PEP) and move all of the assets over without making it a distributable event?
2. When a plan terminates, it creates a distributable event, I believe. Is there a way to convert these assets to a MEP - say like a 'mass rollover'?
3. Finally, are there rules/regulations that prohibit starting a new plan within a short time window of terminating a current plan? If so, are there rules requiring 'grandfathering' of any specific provisions from the terminating plan?

Thanks for any help you might be able to provide.

Two non-profit entities are merging - Employer A (the surviving entity) has a 401(k) plan and  Employer B has a 403(b) plan. 

I'm curious what others thoughts are on whether they should terminate the 403(b) plan or adopt it and freeze it? I generally prefer the termination of a target's retirement plan prior to a merger/acquisition to reduce liability, administrative costs, etc. But do the complexities of terminating a 403(p) plan outweigh the potential benefits here? 

I believe assets are held in a group annuity contract, but there may be individual annuity contracts (I am checking). 

Looking for minimum coverage for small, non producing TPA.  Who do you use? 

So the Hartford will not do a fidelity bond for a multiple employer plan. Does anyone have any recommendations of insurers that will accept it?

Does anyone have any experience with using Davis-Bacon / Prevailing Wage fringe amounts to fund cash balance plans for employees?

Here's the setup - Sponsor has about 100 employees, and probably 75% of them work Davis-Bacon jobs, and they get serious fringe amounts.  Like, amounts between 10k and 30k per year are not uncommon.  We use them in their 401(k) test, for instance, and the representative contribution rate for targeted QNEC purposes is a very nice 16%.

Anyway, the sponsor (or at least his CPA) was intrigued by the idea of a cash balance plan to get the owners (in their 50s) significant plan amounts.  (Actually their DC plan is standalone 401k except for the Davis-Bacon amounts.)

They don't even need all the D-B amounts in their ADP test, which would allow us to use still a bunch of them for 401(a)(4) testing between two plans.  (DC plan would have individual allocation rates, basically being the D-B amount.)

Could they steer some of those prevailing wage fringe amounts into a cash balance plan design?  Figure we'd give most staff people a 3% of pay contribution credit and a 5% interest credit each year.  For the majority of the folks, their fringe amounts would cover either or both of those additional accruals.  

Any issues preventing this?  Is it really different from funding a DC plan's allocations with the Davis-Bacon amounts?  I could imagine any particular labor regulatory board not being thrilled with funding their interest credit that way (although is that even necessarily true?), but I'm not sure I see much difference between putting $5,000 of Davis-Bacon money as a contribution credit into their DC account versus funding a cash balance contribution credit for them.

Am I missing something (obvious or not)?  Plus, the Davis-Bacon amounts are currently in the low twenties as a percentage of 404 payroll, so perhaps a CB plan alleviates some deductibility concern, too.  (And would be PBGC.)

Sponsor figures if he's got to contribute the 3% on top of what they're already going to get for their fringe, it's a dealbreaker, but if he can split the fringe between the two plans (required amount to CB, the rest as DC), he'd be more willing to proceed.

Thanks.

--bri

  If you are filing a final 5500 EZ return (because the plan was closed and the assets distributed), but this is also your first return (the assets never exceeded $250,000 so there was no need to file),  do you check both boxes for the first return (A (1)) and for the final return (A (3)) on part 1 of the 5500 ez?   Or do you check only one box, either the first return or the final return?     Thanks. 

I have a plan that is terminating that also requires employee contributions.  As we know, ee contributions are always 100% vested and upon plan termination all benefits are 100% vested.  The total benefit for the plan is 2% of average comp (which includes the ee contributions).

Assuming 5 year cliff vesting, I have a participant who terminated in 2008 with 2 years of service who had made employee contributions.  Upon plan termination in 2018, the employee contributions remained in the plan.  Do we have to restore the 2 years of service accrued benefit to pay out upon termination or do we assume that the nonvested portion was paid out since we have a BIS?

If a plan with an NRA of age 65 is amended to allow a fully vested participant to take at 62 in-service withdrawals of the participant's "full accrued benefit," according to informal guidance from the IRS, that could create an early retirement subsidy.  The reason is the participant would receive, at least under the terms of the plan,  the same pension without reduction for early commencement that the participant would receive at age 65.  Does this same analysis apply for the modern CB plans? 

I know the prior guidance used to say that the interest credits up to the NRA were part of the participant's "accrued benefit" (or interest credits up to distribution, if taken out earlier)  Some say that at any given time the "accrued benefit" of a CB plan is the hypothetical account balance at that time.   

I'm not sure how all this works together in a CB plan post-PPA.  My question is whether a plan amendment that allows participants at age 62 to take their vested hypothetical account balance in-service would create an early retirement subsidy.  

My ex husband and I were married for 17 years he worked at his job for 22 years and was still employed at time of death. Am I able to draw his 401k. He had 1 daughter and i am sure she was beneficiary over everything. Can someone please help me or give me information on where to start. I live in Florida. Am I eligible for his 401k he was never remarried.

Dave, has there been a change recently? The link I have used to access unread messages now returns a very difficult to read screen. 

A t/x client just acquired another tax exempt that appears to have 3 different 403(b) arrangements with 3 different vendors.  2 of these arrangements have 1-3 participants each and individual annuity contracts are involved.  The arrangements were frozen before 2004 and are non-ERISA plans.  It appears (although I am not certain of this) that plan documents were not required for these arrangements as of 12-31-09.  The question is how does the client terminate these arrangements since there is no plan to terminate?  If the annuity contracts are between the employees/former employees and the contract issuers does my client need to do anything with respect to these arrangements?  The contract issuers are saying that the employer needs to take no action - are the correct?

The last arrangement had employee contributions made to it after 2005 and involves custodial accounts.  There is no plan document (although there may be a custodial account application form) and I'm thinking a VCP is necessary to create a plan document retro to 2009.  Am I off base here?  The mutual fund company holding the custodial accounts doesn't maintain a pre-approved 403(b) plan and generally of no assistance.

Suppose a greater than 5% owner has been taking annual payments of his RMD on 4/1 of each year. His most recent "RMD annuity payment" from the plan was 4/1/2018.

Suppose the plan terminated 8/1/2018 and his benefit is distributed 9/15/2018. Is he required to take another RMD upon distribution even though his next installment is not until 4/1/2019?

Thanks.