austin3515

I for one am frustratd that for a plan design that has been around for 30 years or so (i.e., 403b's), it is still unclear whether entry dates can be used. That is insane.

I would be curious to know what their support of this is. They must have done some research. If you ever get it, please post it! ?Maybe they've gotten determination letters from the IRS?

I have to imagien at a minimum 403b's will get ane xtension, espcially those with audit requirments.I would only expect a last minute extension if the sytem crashes from all the 10/15 filers. But I have to say the system worked perfectly fine on 7/31...

It seems to me that you have all the authority you need, as outlined in bullet point 1. It's definitely out.

1.401(k)-3 Safe harbor requirements Paragraph ©(4): (4) Limitation on HCE matching contributions. The safe harbor matching contribution requirement of this paragraph © is not satisfied if the ratio of matching contributions made on account of an HCE's elective contributions under the cash or deferred arrangement for a plan year to those elective contributions is greater than the ratio of matching contributions to elective contributions that would apply with respect to any eligible NHCE with elective contributions at the same percentage of safe harbor compensation. I think what you are suggesting could cause you to violate this paragraph.

I've always understood that the general intepreation of 100% of pay is the lesser of 100% of pay or what is available to withhold (doesn't say that of course, but logic dictates that it is so). For example, another scenario might be that half his paycheck is being garnished for child-support. Can he defer 100%? Certainly not.

Is a schedule C needed for TIAA-CREF plans? Do they have a Schedule C report?

In TIAA-CREF's Auditor FAQ's (which appears to be drafted before Advisory Opinion 2010-01A) TIAA says that some plan administrators are taking the position that terminated participants can be excluded from the participant counts. This is in addition to the DOL's transitional relief regarding contracts as of 1/1/09. Are others using this exclusion? It doesn't sound like the subject matter of 2010-01A is directly on point with this, but when I noticed that properties of TIAA's pdf document indicated that it was last edited in January 2010, I thought I should make sure. It's the last question on page 9 of the attached. tiaa_cref_faq__s.pdf

Yes, typo. I'm not sure I agree with your correllation to the elective deferrals, where people were not afforded the opportunity to defer, because these people WERE allowed to make the contributions.

It's definitely an ERISA plan.

Pre-tax Employee Contributions are mandatory as a condition of employment. According to sungard, these should be treated as nonelective contributions. Also, the employer makes a "matching" contribution for those employees not making the mandatory contribution. In this particular plan, TIAA will NOT accept money unless a form has been signed by the participant. client has not been as good as they should be about forcing them to fill out the form, so there are a good number of people not making these contributions. Can I treat this as a coverage issue? Because the participants did not make the mandatory contribution, the would not be entitled to the match. All of the people who are not making the contributions were provided with the TIAA Forms. I'm honestly not sure what they've done from that point forward but certainly no one was let go on account of this. My other concern is that the program would not be treated as mandatory deferrals, which would mean that they would be considered ELECTIVE deferrals, which in turn means they are subject to 402g, and there are people in the plan doing the full 402g limit in a separate tda.

have her tell the employer in writing she is revoking her authorization to withhold laon payments from her paycheck, and that she is aware that this will be treated as a taxable distribution. This should do it, in my opinion. Some trustees may not agree, but I think many would.

As "mistakes" go, this to me seems to be one of the most potentialy dangerous since the consequence of failure to comply is a $10K audit, not to mention all of the client's time involved.

But with respect to the small plan audit waiver, employer securities are not subject to the additional bonding requirements.

These things are so rarely the auditors fault. Much more likely the austior was hired last week b/c the client procrastinated... I don;t know what the status will be but it will be considred filed, and you'll need to do an amendmed. Personally, I've never understood why so many prominent people suggest this course, when the administrator is signing under penalty of perjury that the report is complete.

Bird, you do get it... As for the people doing the math, often times the owner is the one to do the math before handing it out. The employees know there is just one owner. And I don't think it's too cavalier to add them together as we are at least addressign the requirement, without providing any insight at all into the disparity in the accounts.

Small plan, where owner has $500K with a financial advisor, and the employees have their money with a recordkeeper (perhaps Asensus). Because the money is actually held by someone other than asensus, they are subject to the small plan audit waiver disclosures. 1) Does everyone agree with me so far? 2) Let's say the SAR says plan assets are $1Million. You disclose that trust company ABC is holding $500K. How are people handling the fact that a little simple math can be revealing regarding the owner's balances? OR perhaps people will question, "where is the rest of my money?". We've done two things in the past: 1) We've added the two pockets of money together and said "ABC Trust Company and Pershing" and then put the total investmetns held, toghether. 2) Concluded that getting a statement from Asensus is so close to being an individual account plan that it's probably OK and skipped the disclosure (as I'm sure thousands of plans do simply because they haven't put as much thought into this as I have!

The 2008 form, as long as you do it before 10/15.

The 415 limit comes to mind, but otherwise no. With respect to the 415 limit, as long as everyone getting the QNEC has enough 2010 compensation you should be OK (of course, they were all still active, so probably they do).

http://sungard.com/sitecore/content/campai...o403bplans.aspx Very very relevant article on mandatory contributionsby Steve Forbes... Beginning of excerpt Some 403(b) plans provide for mandatory contributions. In this situation, making the contribution is a condition of employment. Such a condition may arise from a statute or contract, or may simply be the employer’s policy. Both of these types of contributions reduce the employee’s wages for tax purposes. The FICA rules count these contributions as wages. However, neither type of contribution is an elective deferral for purposes of a 403(b) plan under Treas. Reg. §31.3121(a)(5)-2, which the Treasury finalized in November 2007. Accordingly, these contributions are nonelective employer contributions as far as the plan is concerned. Except for church plans and governmental plans, these contributions are subject to nondiscrimination testing under Code §401(a)(4). They are not subject to the universal availability rule (and cannot be used to satisfy that rule) or the 402(g) limit. Unlike conventional elective deferrals, these contributions are not included in gross compensation for purposes of 415 or other Code provisions which reference the 415 definition of compensation. End of excerpt I have a plan where the employer mandates a 5% employee contribution. If you make said 5% contribution, you get an 8% contribtion. Question is, 8% of what? This article seems to suggest that it is 8% of comp EXCLUDING mandatory contributions unless unique language adding back the mandatory contriubtions is included.

From researching the 415 rules applicable to 403b's, I've looked at the regs and the IRS Pub 571. The regs seem to make it clear that the employer cannot provide a benefit in excess of the 415 limits (i.e., the test is an employer level test, based on the plan year). But in pub 571, it seems to indicate that in addition to a "plan year" review by the employer, the employee also needs to run their own test based on their own taxable year. Am I understanding this correctly? Woluld this mean that as a TPA we should be reviewing calendar year data (even for fiscal year plans) to ensure compliance? The test is actually quite complicated as I'm learning. It's complicated because of the definition of includible compensation, which could include comp from up to several years ago. It would seem to allow someone to go well over a qualified plan's normal 100% of comp limit, unless I'm missing something. Does everyone agree? Has anyone seen a practical user friendly write up of these rules?

Sounds like a conspiracy theory...

http://sungard.com/sitecore/content/campai...o403bplans.aspx Very very relevant article on mandatory contributionsby Steve Forbes... Some 403(b) plans provide for mandatory contributions. In this situation, making the contribution is a condition of employment. Such a condition may arise from a statute or contract, or may simply be the employer’s policy. Both of these types of contributions reduce the employee’s wages for tax purposes. The FICA rules count these contributions as wages. However, neither type of contribution is an elective deferral for purposes of a 403(b) plan under Treas. Reg. §31.3121(a)(5)-2, which the Treasury finalized in November 2007. Accordingly, these contributions are nonelective employer contributions as far as the plan is concerned. Except for church plans and governmental plans, these contributions are subject to nondiscrimination testing under Code §401(a)(4). They are not subject to the universal availability rule (and cannot be used to satisfy that rule) or the 402(g) limit. Unlike conventional elective deferrals, these contributions are not included in gross compensation for purposes of 415 or other Code provisions which reference the 415 definition of compensation.

Does anyone feel that they are getting an unusual number of 2007 Late 5500 Notices? Or is it just that the IRS has sent out a ton of them in the last couple of months?

Sieve, if these are common law employees, the leased employee rules don't even apply. What you're referring to (For example) would be if a company decided to outsource it's IT department to a company that provides that type of service (which is fairly common, from what I understand) where they transferred some of their former common law employees to the IT outsourcing company. The IT department at the recipient is staffed with the IT Consutling companies employees (who used to work directly for the recipient). The "Consultants" working on-site would be leased employees. Therefore, I don't think your analysis applies here - do you agree?