Hi -
I am a member of the Directors Guild of America. I work as a production manager running television shows for various studios and production companies. I have an s-corp/loan out company that receives fees for my services. Besides those fees, my s-corp also receives residual payments from previous shows that make up a smaller part of my income. My s-corp pays me a W2 salary and distributions. I do not own a controlling interest in any of the companies I production manage for, and I don't have an overall managerial role in any of these companies. I run one show at a time for these various companies that produce dozens of shows at a time (Netflix, Paramount, NBCUniversal, etc).
For retirement, I have two defined contribution plans:
1. DGA Supplemental Plan: A multi-employer money purchase plan. The employer (production company/studio) makes contributions to the plan. In addition, there are mandatory after-tax employee contributions (not salary deferrals) fed into the plan. In my case, a payroll company deducts these employee contributions from the payments to my s-corp. *My s-corp is not signatory to the DGA and has not made/will never make any direct contributions to the DGA Pension Plans.
2. One Participant 401k Plan: I am the only participant. All of the elective deferrals, profit-sharing contributions, and VAT contributions are calculated properly, and the VAT ---> Roth 401k conversions are done to the letter. There have been no §402(g) or §415(c) excesses.
The newest version of the DGA Summary Pension book has a poorly written section about the possibility of aggregating a member's loan-out defined contribution plan and the DGA Supplemental Plan's contributions under one §415(c) limit in certain circumstances if the member terminates their plan before the DGA Supp plan pays its benefits at retirement. It goes on to imply that this aggregation will only triggered if the s-corp/loan-out contributes directly to the DGA Supp Plan. However, the wording is so vague that I want to be 100% certain it *only* gets triggered if my s-corp/loan-out contributes directly. Naturally, I am trying to get clarity from the DGA Pension Plan, but it has not been easy. I spoke with them twice, and the conversation was frustrating. I also sent an email and am waiting on a response. In the meantime...
I can understand aggregating the limits if my s-corp made direct contributions to the DGA Pension Plans. However, is there any precedent for aggregating the limits in a situation like mine, where that didn't happen?
I know this is a lot, but I've searched back on several threads here (a famous one from 2002!), and I cannot seem to find a straight answer anywhere. My CPA is no help, as you can imagine. Any opinions would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you,
JF
