From the instructions:

"The information reported on Forms 8955-SSA is generally
given to the Social Security Administration (SSA). The SSA
provides the reported information to separated participants
when they file for social security benefits."

My question is...if a separated participant is over NRA and already drawing SSN is the SSA information still provided to the Social Security Administration and if so, do they send a letter to those people?

I'm thinking no if the prompt for the SSA is the participant applying for social security benefits.

I have a 401 (k) profit sharing plan, where the forfeitures are reallocated.

For 2013, the forfeitures did not get transferred out of the forfeiture account and into the participants accounts.

The transfer is going to be made now. It's not a lot of money, the top earning participants got about $650.

For 2014, do those amounts have to be included in the 415 test?

3 person PSP where the owner has a life insurance policy within the plan.

She paid the premium of $6500 by moving assets out of the profit sharing pooled account. The life insurance policy is titled under the plan.

Would you put this $6500 on line 8d - benefits paid including direct rollover and insurance premiums to provide benefits, or maybe on line 8g - other expenses?

Background: We have an employee that wants us to prove that all wages being used in their pension is accurate for the last 30 years. The company I work for is in an industry where there are lots of mergers/acquisitions, etc. We hold the records in our payroll system for about the last ten years. The prior wages (mostly from other companies) came over on file feeds from prior retirement plan vendors. We do not have any other prior pension plan benefit offsets, our pension actually calculates the benefit for the entire 30 years (all wages, not a final 36 month pay pension). Most of the hourly employee eligible wages are for their normal scheduled work hours and excludes certain overtimes. The W2s wont really be much use to us in this situation.

Question: Do we only need to provide proof for maybe the last three or maybe it is seven years of the wages being used in the calculation? We are able to print paychecks for the last 10 years. I just wanted to get your opinions before we double check with legal.

The employer sponsors a plan that allows for davis bacon contributions. Recently, there has not been any davis bacon work, but the company has other non-DB projects for the employees.

The company continues to compensate these employees at the DB prevailing wage, even though the work is not DB work. For purposes of the retirement plan, can the employer continue to "treat" these wages as DB wages, taking out fringes and making contributions to the plan? This doesn't sound right, but any comments are appreciated.

This is the first sentence of the text of the model COBRA Election Notice as revised by the DOL to incorporate information about the availability of coverage in the Marketplace. I am copying it verbatim from the DOL website:

This notice has important information about your right to continue your health care coverage in the [enter name of group health plan] (the Plan), as well as other health coverage options that may be available to you, including coverage through the Health Insurance Marketplace at www.HealthCare.gov or call 1-800-318-2596.

(The underscore/underlined text after "call" is as in the original.)

It seems to me as if there are words missing after the word "Marketplace" because the sentence does not make grammatical sense as written (although the intent of the sentence is obvious). I have not seen any discussion of this.

Has anyone encountered this? If so, what, if any changes did you make to this language when customizing it for actual use?

Thanks.

Taking over a 401k plan. Plan effective date 1/1/2014-12/31/2014. Clients fiscal year is 2/1-1/31.

Plan Compensation is W2 and the compensation computation period is paid to participant during the plan year eligible.

Client mentioned that they put in a $75000.00 contribution in May of 2014. This Profit Sharing Contribution was deducted on their tax return for 1/31/2014 and was based on participants compensation for 2013.

1. Could they do this? My thought is that they should have matched the plan year with the fiscal year and have put in a contribution based on compensation from 1/1/14-1/31/14.

2. I am now asked to allocate PS for their fiscal year of 1/31/15 based on 2014 compensation. Do I need to change the definition of compensation in the plan document? Or do I add both contributions together for 2014 and make sure that 415 is satisfied?

Plan sponsor has active defined benefit and profit sharing plan. At present time both plans are safe harbor (same accrual rate/allocation for all participants)

Starting 2016 the DB plan will amend the formula to 5% X avg comp X years of service for the HCEs and 0.5% X avg comp X years of service for NHCE.

All benefits accrued tio the date of change will be preserved (frozen), etc.

Using the fresh start with wear away, some of the participants will not accrue any benefits until the benefits accrued under the new formula will equal the frozen accrued benefits.

The DB and PSP will be aggregated for testing purposes.

The profit sharing allocation for NHCEs will be whatever is needed to pass the aggregate discrimination tests.

Question:

In the discrimination tests; should the participants that do not accrue benefits due to the wear away be considered as benefiting (0.5%) or non-benefiting due to the fact that practically they do not accrue a benefit during the year?

We are using current year accrual method for discrimination testing.

Help is greatly appreciated.

We have a plan for which the sponsor has always filed a 5500-EZ, even though it has been under $250,000.

If he stops filing the 5500-EZ, should we expect a notice from the IRS?

Plan has lump sum distribution only. Can employer amend plan to add installment option? If so, would installment option only be available for amounts deferred after effective date of amendment?

Plan only provides for one of the 409A CIC options: a "change in ownership of a substantial portion of corporate assets." Under the Regs this means the date on which a person or group of people acquires (or has acquired during the 12-month period ending on the date of the most recent acquisition by that person or group of people) assets from the corporation that have a total gross FMV equal to or more than 40% of the total gross FMV of all assets of the corporation immediately before such acquisition.

Under the terms of their plan, CIC accelerates vesting and is also a payment trigger.

A 58% owner wants to leave the company in 2 years and have the other owners absorb his 58%. If the 58% owner transferred half (29%) in one 12-month period and the remaining half (29%) in the subsequent 12-month period, does it circumvent the CIC trigger? Company does not want the transfer from the 58% owner to trigger a CIC.

Can a participant rollover funds from a 403(b)(7) into a 401(k)? Any other helpful information on 403(b)(7) would be appreciated!

Any problems or particular concerns with a 401(k) Plan amending the plan to increase the cash-out threshold from $1,000 to $5,000 (along with adopting appropriate automatic IRA rollover procedures) and then cashing out all the former employees with balances between $1k and $5k? We've been told that it is fine to apply the new limit prospectively to all accounts (including those accounts below $5k that have been in the plan for a number of years because of the old threshold). Just wanted to be sure there is no protected benefit or rights associated with the old limit. Thanks.

Plan requires all employer match contributions be made to the ESOP. Participants can contribute pre and after tax to the core investments. The participant has contributed a total of $64,000 after tax to his account. Participant is retiring and will take a distribution. Shares will be transferred to the participant. Cost Basis for the Shareis $80,000. Recordkeeper stated the particiapnt could use the After Tax contribution to further reduce the cost basis - would now be $16,000.

Question:

If the after tax is used to off set the cost basis, where does it go?? The recordkeeper stated it pays the taxes. Then stated the particiapnt would receive a 1099R for the $16,000 cost basis and have to pay taxes on this.

This does not make sense, why would you pay $64,000 in taxes and no where get credit for the payment.

What am I missing here!!!

Thanks

I'm working on the 2014 Schedule H for a Plan. The investment vendor provided a .05% credit back to participants per the contract. The credit is disclosed to the participants in both the 404(a)(5) information as well as reflected on the participant individual statements. It is also reported separately on the overall plan reporting.

I'm trying to figure out the "best" place on the Sch H to show this credit back to participants. It's not a huge amount. Perhaps "Other income"?

Where would others put this amount on the Sch H?

Thank you in advance....

To effect the election of an employer decision to exclude seasonal employees, does the employer need to do anything official, such as amend the plan, adopt a corporate action (e.g., through board resolutions), file anything with the IRS, DOL and/or HHS?

401(k) Plan was in pooled accounts prior to 2012. Funds transferred to individual accounts in 2012.

In 2015, trustee receives $11,000 check made out to the plan for excess commissions charged while the plan was invested in the pooled accounts.

My inclination is to allocate this money based on balances held as of 12/31/2014 as opposed to going back to the 12/31/2012 valuation to figure out who was in the plan at that time. This plan has a lot of turnover, therefore, the cost benefit to try to find the terminated participants as of 12/312012 is not worth it.

Has anyone been in a similar situation?

The Supreme Court of the United States, in its recent decision in M&G Polymers, provided some guidance about how to construe and interpret writings that are ambiguous about promises of health coverage for retirees.

Here's my question: Looking only to non-governmental employers, and only outside a collective-bargaining context, how often does this issue happen?

Are there still employers left that have not cut off obligations and expectations?

If so, what circumstances lead to not revising the documents?

I am just taking over this plan in which the only employee is the self-employed owner. I can;t figure out how my predecessor calculated the 4% match. The net schedule income is $94,249.16. She contributed $16,900.00 during the year. This amount was not included in the Schedule C breakdown. What should be the match be?

This a question of curiosity only, as I don't know of any such situation.

Has anyone ever done a plan for a worker cooperative? If you do, how does it work - for example, are employees paid on a W-2, or are they treated as individual "self-employed" people? I'm under the impression that cooperatives pay out amounts similar to an S-corp "pass-through" payment, but some payments are taxable and others aren't, etc... - and perhaps these are in addition to W-2 salary.

And would a worker cooperative "deduct" any qualified plan payment? I think the cooperative, as an entity, perhaps isn't subject to federal tax anyway - money is either legally retained to a certain extent - whatever that might be - or paid out either in a taxable or non-taxable form?

Again - just idle curiosity.