austin3515

Any shot you'd share your masterpiece? I won't blame ya for saying no, but I have to ask Something's with my eye today???

If you read what she said closely you'll see she said just the opposite (I had to read it a couple of times myself). That's because you need not consider union employees for discrimination testing (they are "excludable"). Well unless you have any 401(m) component of the plan in which the union people participate (I think? Kind of an odd catch, but I'm pretty sure it's there).

I'm glad to be an inspiration to the great 3 eyed fish

While I find Blinky's remark entertaining, I'm not sure a letter is so crazy. A lot of employees don't understand what's going on on those statements. MAYBE they notice the deposit (if they open their mail), but they might not know it was 5% of pay.

Does anyone have a sample letter to participants letting them that the employer made a great PS + SH contribution for them? I have a client that wants their participants to know just how generous they are.

If your question is purely from an economic perspective, than the answer is that there is no "cost" to the company. You just gave away income. As for book reporting, the match expense would certainly be reported as "match expense" for the year, thus reducing net income. On the statement of stockholder's equity, there would be a corresponding increase to equity for the additional stock issued, such that the net impact on the company's equity is zero (i.e., the value of the company is unchanged). The newsletter may be referring to "comprehensive income" which simply means net income adjusted for junk that gets plugged through equity. Comprehensive income per share would be diluted because of the increase in the denomitor (i.e., the number of shares). You're getting into some pretty advanced accounting here, so be forewarned. I am a CPA and did financial reporting for 7 years.

I bet deathbycashcall is pouring over her document as we speak...

Probably the cleanest thing to do based on jquazza's analysis (which I agree with) is to give the keys 3%. This would make it essentially a 3% profit sharing contriubtions, oh and by the way the TH minimums kick so you better allocate in accordance with TH. But wait, we already did!

Really great point (i.e., because this would blow the Plan's TH exemption), but the doc says that forf's offset the match, so that shouldn't be it...

That was just an extreme example. Denying a hardship from 2 days ago doesn't seem like a reasonable interpretation though does it?

I don't know, but if you go to google.com and type automatic enrollment 401(k) I suspect you'll find hundreds of good articles. People love to write about this one.

The count continues to grow...

one more time... (people are responding, but votes don't push it up...)

i.e., not more than 12 months ago? I think that's kinda what I was saying (although I did not know of the 1 year standard). I got the impression that these costs were incurred recently.

just bumping it back up...

You may authorize the distribution. In fact, what's worse is paying the hardship BEFORE the participant pays the bill, because you don't know for sure the hardship was incurred. You know with certainty now that they were in fact incurred. I mean if he's cying hardship for something three years ago, I might be a bit more skeptical, but you don't allude to any significant passage of time.

It is the day the check is sent in the mail. What other rational measure could there possibly be? Certainly not the date of delivery, as this is well beyond the control of the sponsor. So that leaves... well nothing, so it must be the date mailed. Think of how many mortgage payments would never be missed if they went exclusively by the date field on the check... It's better than a time machine!

a) perhaps in the example they made up a rate, or b) Make sure your looking at the corporate underpayments. I think your link is to the wrong item, but I know that there are several diffeent tables in the notices.

In my opinion, this is not quite the old chicken and egg related... You don't get to charge a fee unless you do a distribution, and you can't do a distribution if the balance is over $1,000. I'm with Archimage.

I'm curious if other TPA firms will maintain an annual summary of accounts when this information is already provided by the investment company. It takes so much time!! And client's don't care (the vast majority anyway)!!

I always thought the answer was no. Perhaps what Kirk is thinking is if you sent an email to everyone with the a link to the SMM? Electronic delivery is acceptable if certain requirements are met, one of which I believe is that it must be offered in paper if requested (this is the rule for safe harbor notices, which I think was meant to be consistent with the DOL?)

1) Yes, you still need to issue an SMM, but you would qualify it by saying something to the affect of "contingent upon approval by the IRS." 2) Yes you can post-it. BUT, that won't satisfy your obligation to distribute the SMM. It must be delivered to all participants. You may want to post what the amendment actually was, as this may change my answer?

No. I love the easy ones!

I'm not sure I'd use the term "retroactively" cause that implies that previous distributions would need to be adjusted (although I'm sure that's not what you had in mind). But yes, you can certainly provide full vesting for existing balances.

"Compensation" 98-52 references 1.414(s)-1, and that site seems to incorporate both the safe harbor definitions and anything that passes the ratio test. See "permissable compensation" section of this article. http://www.mellon.com/hris/fyi/fyi_02_02_99a.html Anyone else care to settle this? Or do you agree Wmyer?