austin3515

The issue which is a very real one in my opinion is that participants talk to each other and it becomes known that you can just do this. Take a well meaning HR manager who knows it is an option. A participant comes in and says "I can't pay my bills". The well meaning HR says "hey let's stop paying your loan". Now 3 people have done it. They tell their friends. I'm just saying its possible that the loan program could get into trouble pretty quickly. Lower paid employees want the money and they don't want to repay the loans. Many would jump at the opportunity to stop the payments. Maybe not immediately but at some point over the 5 year period, "probably" they will. Maybe I'm being to cautious but I will say many clients have made this issue first. In fact if I'm not mistaken it may be a client who first made this point me umpteen years ago.

Maybe I am just being dense here, but these two sentences seem contradictory? The first seems to say participants can request a cessation of withholding; the latter says if permitted the plan is disqualified? I cannot believe this has still not been resolved. So frustrating!

Thats what I've always though, but I have a lot of clients who are very afraid of doing that because if word gets out that repaying loans is "voluntary" then it might become a pretty popular option (tax consequences notwithstanding).

What is a naked payroll deduction? Something that is not irrevocable basically?

Participant comes into plan sponsor and says I am NOT repaying this loan any longer. What is a plan sponsor/trustee to do? That's it. That's the question. I'll be darned if this question has ever been answered.

Non-Profit organization is not part of a controlled group with a For Profit company (I don't think its even possible?). But there is some very strong connection between the two, probably donation driven, maybe the for-profit handles the accounting work, I don;t really know. Any reason they both cant participate in the SAME 401(k) plan?

And answering the premise of my initial question - this is obviously an IRS rule and solo 401ks clearly affected by it. This will be fun. But all of this in my opinion pales in comparison to those ill thought out vesting rules. How one could hope to comply with those rule (independent of a TPA/RK with several years of solid data on ALL employees) is completely beyond me. But that would have to be a different thread altogether. Pray that someone figures out how stupid that requirement is and repeals that section.

Well because we don't have to worry about top-heavy minimums, and nondiscrimination, maybe it's not to so bad after all . You just have to do a 5500 I guess. I suppose our fees have to go up a lot now that all of that is required. But I guess it doesn;t prevent the owner from maxing out with zero contributions for any employees. And they need a fidelity bond. I too don't see the need for two separate plans, especially taking into account all of the extra fees.

Hmmm... That really stinks. i mean really I guess most of the solos are just husband and wife at most. It will just be one more thing to watch out for I guess.

So my mind starting twisting around in circles over this question. A solo 401(k) plan is exempt from ERISA and therefore presumably exempt from the new "Long-Term Part Time" employee rules. Or is it? Because if it is not exempt from those rules, there are an awful lot of solo 401k plans that will no longer be solo 401k plans. And that would really make me go Hmmm.... Anyone know what the story is?

Mimecast has a feature whereby it scans outgoing emails for SS#'s. The problem is that there are too many false postives, the most annoying of which is that it seems to scan even things like peoples Facebook links. So there are some clients every time I email them I have to delete their signature to avoid getting bounced. Is that commonplace with all of these tools? Is there a better mousetrap out there?

Well if anyone out there knows, chances are they visit these message board! Let's hope!

I assume the IRS has made a decision about whether or not they will extend the Auto Enrollment missed deferral corrections in ECPRS which sunset at the end of the year. Has anyone heard what that decision is?

45 days from teh date you get the letter, which will likely be middle of November at the earliest. And then in my experience if they are making a lot of progress, they would then send a letter that the audit is in progress. I'll tell you in all my years I never heard of a fine being levied on a plan administrator that was getting the audit worked on. Has anyone actually seen a fine levied because the audit was not returned in that 45 day period when the plan admin made it clear it was a work in progress? That seems awfully hard to imagine.

I have seen some auditors attach to the 5500 as the audit report a letter that basically says "hey. we're working on the audit." The benefit of this approach (which is what I don;t like about it) as the filing will be accepted without error. I happen to think it is a little disingenuous because though it looks like you are "doing the right thing" by disclosing the fact that you are working on the audit it has the effect of hiding the fact that you haven't done the audit. Do others recommend in favor of or against this approach?

A different market? A different industry altogether. Nay, a different world!

Agreed, but it seems that I'm already in a similar situation with these brokerage accounts.

Update: T Rowe Price offers this with a choice of Invesnet or Mesirow as the 3(38) with no traditional advisor. From a business/relationship perspective AND from a philisophical perspective I believe strongly in the role that an advisor plans. But there are plans that my best relationships would not want to go anywhere near because they are too small, and I have others where the client will not under any circumstance incur an additional expense. It is these two scenarios that this would be a good fit. In fact two I have in mind rejected very competitive investment advisory scenarios and opted to keep the "cheap/free" Fidelity Non-Prototype accounts.

With a 3(38) attached? (updated: I emailed our contact at T Rowe, and will update when I hear back).

OK my wife's company uses Nuance (now KoFax) and theirs seems to do everything I need it to (i.e., none of the deal breakers above are present). Still not as good as Adobe, but definitely pretty good! I ended up doing Kofax Power PDF Advanced version 4.0. It costs $200, so a lot less than Adobe and again it seems to be adequate. So again, if I open a file a 2nd time, it just activates the window that already has the file open.

Too bad. I guess the 3(38) is the way to go. I've seen them for 7/8 basis points before. Of course they wont do a darn thing for you, but then again you don't need them to. If I take that lead and run with it, has anyone seen a RK platform that will just use one of those 3(38)'s as the advisor (i.e., a Morningstar or Mesirow), and not a traditional advisor (and unbundle)? Can Am Funds RK Direct do this?? Come to think of it TIAA does this. But I think if TIAA were the last 401k vendor on earth I wouldn't put a new plan there!

"I see no reason to have the same document opened in two windows" I might be working 4 separate pdfs within a 10 minute span. A plan document, a census report, a contribution report and an ACP test just to let you know where I am coming from. I admit there are times (many of them) when I reopen the census report (I may not have looked a that particular report in half an hour for example). In Adobe, if I "reopen" the census report it just activates the window that already has it. Fox it just reopens it a 2nd copy and both versions are read only. Which I think can really only be justly called a bug. I don't see this as a practical solution. I think part of the difference might be that we print nothing in our offices anymore, we're completely paperless. So that means I have lots of pdf documents open all at once. Cheap is good, but productivity is better I think is where this might shake out for me...

Does anyone know of a recordkeeper will take a plan with no advisor? I think Employee Fiduciary mught be one? If so, what have the sponsors done for an investment line up? I was thinking the sponsor might choose just offer some series of target date funds... We have a decent number of clients who won't leave brokerage accounts because they don;t want to pay 50bps to an advisor. And some plans are so small no advisor would ever take them.

Now I found with FoxIt too another issue is that before I know i have 15 windows open. If I open a new PDF if it opens a new window, even if another is sitting their empty and unused. I can't understand how these packages get everything so incredibly right, but not something the "big boys" have figured out is a requirement. Adobe, Excel, Word, they all figured out how to easily manage multiple open documents in different windows that can be dragged around from monitor to monitor. You'd think that would be an obvious enhancement with dual monitors being the absolute norm...

Exactly which is a problem when you make changes on the wrong one