austin3515

Often times temp agencies will provide an employee on a temp-to-hire basis. The idea is, see if you like the employee, if you do, go ahead and hire them. The question is, what is the date of hire and when do you start tracking eligibility? Vesting Service? Is it the day the payroll transfer? Or the date the employee first performs an hour service? Any references to court cases or official documents would be great, although I'm curious to know what everyone's thoughts are.

Does anyone know where we can get the text of obscure PLR's???

Is there a recommended best practice? For example, should a letter be sent demanding repayment? Should it be sent to a collections agency? Etc. etc...

I just saw the posts two or three topics down that is exactly my question... http://benefitslink.com/boards/index.php?showtopic=26064

Participant directed plan, where loans are treated as participant directed. Participant is full-time, drops down to part-time, and now the loan repayments cannot be supported by his pay, so his payroll deductions must stop. My only question is what is the fiduciary's responsibility to pursue collection of this amount? Should they sue the participant for collection? Force them into bankruptcy, etc.? The Plan stipulates that discontnuing payroll deductions is an event of default.

RButler, that post was awesome... Thanks!

Awsome! What happens then if the employee's pay is no longer sufficient to cover the loan repayments? Reduce the net pay check to zero? Or a deemed distribution? Talk amongst yourselves...

I'm not sure that that changes the answer? The problem that I have is that the people have signed a loan and cannot afford to repay it. I guess the overriding question is what is the trustee's obligation to collect the outstanding balance? Surely it's different than a bank trying to collect a mortgage, no? Is it really that different from when someone terminates employment?

Participant takes out a new loan, and payments are via payroll deduction. For whatever reason the participant now believes they cannot afford to repay the loan. In fact they send a letter to the Administrator saying "cease all loan repayment deductions from my paycheck." Where I come from, if the participant says stop withholding something, you must stop withholding (with a few exceptions). What do you do? Stop withholding? If so, aren't we creating a back door for early distributions? If not, how can you deny a participant's request to cease withholding? What if they sincerely can't afford it? Medical bills, etc.?

Because the plan has a last day rule no one has yet accrued a benefit, and you can therefore amend the Plan to change the defition of comp in a way that decreases allocations. Do a search on terminating Money Purchase plans/merging into PS plans, and you will see a lot of discussion on this question.

A plan that does not require spousal consent obtained spousal consent for a plan distribution. Three interesting twists: 1) The participant also happens to be the owner/sponsor of the Company. 2) The participant forged the spouse's signature 3) He is now getting a divorce. He has obviously already spent the money and wants to avoid the court saying something along the lines of, "well obviously the spouses consent was required... as such fork over half of the dough." I'll settle for thoughts on the legal effect of obtaining a spousal consent when not necessary. Any thoughts?

http://benefitslink.com/boards/index.php?s...t=0entry59164 I just found this post, which is quite informative...

I tried both and I still come up with nothing?? Any suggestions on a recommended search?

Participant is 60 and wants a participant loan for a primary residence to amortize over 30 years. I believe denying the loan on the basis that it will never be paid back is age discrimination, however, I cannot find anything in writing. Are there any limits regarding the latest maturity date allowable that are based on age? Can anyone point to something official looking? Thanks,

Surrender charges! That's what I saw! I will definitely look up the references. Thanks everyone!

LEt's say for example that there was one HCE who's account has $1MM, and one HCE who's account has $10,000. There's an asset based chard of 1% of assets, which is paid by the Plan. I don't think it's a stretch to say that the HCE got an extra $10,000 contribution through this arrangement...

Facts: 401(k) Plan with $10MM in assets. HCE's have very large balances. Employer pays all asset based investment expenses of the plan. Is this discriminatory? Effectively, the HCE's get a larger "contribution" from the employer? I'm pretty sure that I read somewhere that this would cause problems (at least it would necessitate general nondiscrim testing). Any sites/articles/regs etc. would be helpful. Thanks,

I have a client that wants to know more about communicating with clients regarding deferral levels. Can any recommend an article regarding tips on these communications? What is going too far? I'm curious to hear all of your thoughts as well, but I would like to send the client an article. They are closing on passing ADP tests, so she really wants the NHCE's to contribute.

I'm with PATA, paritcularly with Mr. Poje!

Oh! How is this tracked in the first place. I've never seen an after-tax bucket and an after-tax earnings bucket. Should there be? Or is that usually maintained in a "back-end memory bank" on a server somewhere?? At least I was right about one thing! (that being that I am naive!)

No problem at all. Why would there be a law to prevent the employer from providing additional benefits? There is no requirement that all contributions vest in the same way. I don't think you intended to "restate", but just to be clear, you could accomplish this through an amendment. Well, I guess provided all the language was in there about ACP testing (maybe there's other sections that need to be amended? Maybe restating wouldn't be such a bad idea after all!)

Maybe I'm naive (and I;m certain I am), but who cares? The most important thing is that you know what the post-tax balance is today, and if I understand you correctly, you know that. So in the event of distributions, they will be taxed appropriately? What am I missing???

My input is purely from a practical perspective. Why would they want to add such an arbitrary and ostensibly non-sensical differentiation? Sounds like a participant communication nightmare. They should be allowed to make special elections with respect to bonuses, period. Why complicate it? Eventually some participant will be pretty upset that they don't have this opportunity because of a technicality.

Is there a web site that ranks SIMPLE IRA/401(k) providers? For example, which of the big mutual fund companies are the most highly rated?

1) What do you think about amending the W-2's to reclassify draws as compensation, thereby generating income? 2) What if, at the time the retroactive election was made, a "dummy" payroll entry was made to "gross-up" wages for fica, futa, etc., such that the impact would be the same as though the employee had been a W-2 employee from day 1?