austin3515

-Owners who have participated for 20 or 30 years can have close to a million dollars in their account or more -Family businesses (oh biy, this is a great one - Dad, Wife and 2 kids!) -Plans with 5 or more owners. I've just described MANY small businesses. Sure, plans with 3 employees are almost always going to be top-heavy, but I would not go so far as to call it uncommon in plans with 30 employees.

Am i the only one readiong too deeply into the last paragraph? Certainly a letter to the IRS saying the filing wasn't timely because the web-site crashed when you tried, etc. etc. would by you a couple of days? The web-site crashing thing so far has only delayed us, but of course, when the site crashes on 10/15... This assumes of course that you reallly did try to log in and file and fail...

Does it help the sponsor to know that there is no particular due date for the top-heavy? They could fund it piecemeal. I like the cash basis idea, just make sure everything is cash basis at least at y/e. Would be sort of interesting if the beginning balances are on an accrual basis, not sure how/if that could be rectified since there is no means of converting on the 5500 accrual to cash. My 2 Cents: I've seen some DEVESTATING outcomes. If I was the owner of the TPA shop, personally, I would resign but also send an email or letter return receipt telling them they're insane for not making the contribution and the plan will surely be dqed if audited. Sieve, you're breadth of knowledge is very impressive, to say the least. However, I don;t think you've dealt a lot with owners of small businesses who work 80 hours a week for $50,000 a year instead of closing their business and putting 20 or 30 people out of work altogether, which could be a VERY real possibility when facing a 3% THM. Is that a fair statement? I'm not suggesting I don't agree with you in principal, but I'm not hearing any compassion for the poor guy that got "punched in the face" by the most ridiculous rule ever conceived.

is anyone seeing processing stopped statuses flip over to Filing Received? We have a lot coming back in the last day or two (even after adjusting for higher volume) as processing stopped, but nothing obvious is jumping out at us as a cause.

Let's say the client omits 3 term dates from the census file. Personally, I don't see this as a big deal. Even if it came to light next year, I would not do an amended 5500.

That;s not good.. Am I the only that thinks this is pretty common in the "micro market"?

You are suggesting that this test is satisfied then in the scenario that I laid out? (BTW, I hope it is b/c we've let clients do this because we had agreed that this was true!)

What if the participants accounts are at, say, John Hancock, and the owner has his money with his financial advisor in an FBO account. The advisor has a $500K mininimum account balance. Hard to suggest that the participants have similar options. Are we saying that this would not be allowable (because obviously it won't pass testing since no NHCE's have the option)?

all you need is a resolution since the provisions of the plan are not being changed. Your just pulling the plug on it.

ASPPA ASAP directly on point... http://www.asppa.org/document-vault/pdfs/a...2010/10-33.aspx

Not sure I agree since since the DFVC penalty accrues from 7/31, and would always therefore end up being the 750 (for a small plan)

No cite either, but I agree with Bird. It's in the EOB though, I had looked this up once before.

403(b) Plan's at TIAA tend to have about half of their account balances allocated to terminated participants, none of whom have been reported to SSA before. So now we need to report the new people who terminate on the SSA, I assume? Here's the tricky part, as people take distributions, how do we know which of the sea of people were previously reported on the SSA?? I know we haven't even made it to the 15th but was wondering what I should be telling my 403b clients for whom we're delivering a form 5500? Will there be a follow up for the SSA?

Or perhaps they did not create a password to fully activate the account. We had this come up a lot, because people would print out the page with the credentials and assume (quite reasonably I might add) that they were done. When in fact, if you continue on for a couple more screens your credentials are never activated and you get "processing stopped" when you file... But if none of this is the case, and they really did expire, please do let us know because that would be one for the record books...

IOn Rleius, there is an attachment for Accountants Opinion, which is where we are putting the audited statements. When we do this, we get no validation errors. But there is also this: "financial statements used in formulating accountant's opinion" What the heck is that??

I should say that before I heard it was a commonplace recommendation to file without the auditors report, I recommended against it, because after all, clients are signing "under penalty of perjury" that the return is COMPLETE and accurate. I was never able to reconcile this recommendation with that fact, but the DOL clearly doesn't seem to feel this is an issue (if they did, I don't think they would have written their recommendations that way). But I do agree wholeheartedly that if you go this route, make sure it doesn't burn you if things don't go as expected!!

Is the take home from the FAQ that the DOL would rather have SOME (indeedn MOST) ifnormation rather than no information at all? After all, they have never penalized for late filing of the auditor's report in the past (assuming it was filed before the really nasty nasty letters)- why would they start now?

Are we saying that filing the 5500 without the attachemnt is not even considered filed? I would have thought it would be filing error, which is considered filed.

What is the difference between: 15 Recordkeeping and information management (computing, tabulating, data processing, etc.) AND 64 Recordkeeping fees Do I need both? Is one the service and the other whow they get paid for it?? Same thing for: 27 Investment advisory (plan) AND 51 Investment management fees paid directly by plan

Is there any prohibition on an adopting employer adopting a safe harbor plan when there are fewer than 3 months left in the Plan Year? The plan year IS more than 3 months...

Any discussions specifically about the integration though? I can understadn the diversification stuff, etc. being top of the agenda, but I'm just curious if they are really cracking down on the integration portion of the disclosure.

Has anyone ever heard of any enforcement initiatives, etc. regarding the PPA requirement that plans disclose the existence of social security integration on the quarterly participant statements? I imagine people must have gone through DOL audits where these disclosures have at least come up.

Is anyone using the "Attachment to 2009 Form 5500 SF Line 10a - Schedule of Delinquent Participant Contributions"? 1) If so, why or why not? 2) Is this information the DOL can access electroncially or does a person need to open a pdf file and look at it? For example, will including this form make less likely that the DOL might send a letter inquiring regarding whether or not the late depoit was corrected? Generally, I prefer to do less work unless there is a compelling reason to do more work. Is there a reason to do this?

Finally cleared last night

I just read a note written by an auditor regarding this very topic: Per discussion with TIAA-CREF, and review of the TIAA-CREF Auditor Guide, ____notes that the realized and unrealized gains and losses on the TIAA Traditional Annuity represents interest. The TIAA Traditional provides both guaranteed interest and discretionary interest. The guaranteed interest is recorded as earnings in the trust report. In order to record the discretionary interest, the TIAA-CREF recordkeeping system unitized the TIAA Traditional Annuity and the discretionary interest is recorded as realized and unrealized gains in the trust report. Accordingly, _____ will reclassify the realized and unrealized gains to interest income