masteff

© © Very cool! Thanks Dave! (©, Mike, it could be done)

Would you © it better if you borrowed my glasses? ~©-©~ (Careful, they might make you © sick)

Okay, just a small peeve but thought it might be worth asking. Is it possible to change the setup for the message board so it won't automatically replace a letter C in parentheses with the copyright symbol? ©

Back to the original proposition... You have your own answer right there, you're just hoping we'd give you a different one because you're mad about it. But the company has the right to do this and you have no choice but to comply. Whether that means your girlfriend loses coverage or you get married or you find another job that will cover her, is up to you.

Benefit of making an amendment is clarifying whether only those EE's active who transfer to hospital on date of acquisition get credited w/ vesting/eligibility service or whether former EE's can show up later and get service. This can reduce future administrative burden of determining service for former EE's who show up years later.

Are there legitimate chances of the subsidiary being sold off at a future date and if so, will your current adopting amendment contain any clauses addressing future elimination of the stock as an investment option in such an event? (I don't have an express opinion either way, just have been on the purchasing end of that and know too well that former company stock can carry a bit of an admin burden.)

What do they/you mean by "enroll" in the plan? Yes, they have to be an eligible participant in the plan, but no, they don't have to sign up for deferrals to get profit sharing (because then it would be a match and not a profit share). The non-contributing participants would still want to set up investment elections and complete beneficiary designation forms. Perhaps what you're looking for is more like an annual discretionary match? I guess we need to know a little more about what you're wanting to do versus what the TPA says you have to do.

And looking at the W-4 form, single and 2 would be fairly normal. http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/fw4.pdf Perhaps, wedge1, you meant zero dependents?

I'm agreeing w/ Bird and just expanding on his 33% -- if you only wanted 1/2 of $1039 to be deducted for Roth, then 50% of $1039 is close to 33% of $1528.50.

Just re-reading DTH's original post. Since the plan permits MRD installments which we all agree don't commence until 2015, and since the spouse hasn't received any distributions, aren't we forced to concluded the spouse has elected MRD installments beginning in 2015? I.e., the spouse is deferring distribution until the required beginning date? (Note: some plans either include language or have a standard operating policy that if one option is to defer commencement, then that's the default until the participant elects otherwise.)

I've only seen it from a 401(k) point of view, where it can be a standard feature in mergers and acquisitions. Main thing I can think of to consider is whether you only want persons in active employment who actually transfer on the date of acquisition to get service for vesting or if you want to leave it open. This controls how you word your amendment, for example, "all employees of company xyz on date _____ who become employees of company abc on date _____". If you leave out one or both of the dates, you can leave it more open. So maybe former employees of xyz could show up later and get service. Or people who terminate instead of being acquired could show up later and get service. Oh, and if the people coming over do so on several dates, then you'll have to adjust accordingly by using a date range ("oh, mr senior exec, of course we can adjust the dates because you didn't show up until 3 months later"). The main reason to make it very specific is that if a former xyz employee shows up 10+ years from now, will you be able to find the data to substantiate their prior service and how hard will that be to do ("which one of 50 boxes in archives will that be in, better pull them all". If anyone knows of uniqueness to 403(b) that might alter what I've said, please speak up.

I understand your dilemma. We had a sister company in Florida w/ 6 employees and had to fight them every year about control group status and needing numbers for testing. Unfortunately control group prevails even where "related employer" might give you some latitude.

I think part of QDROphile's point, though not explicitly stated, is that you need to look not just in the plan but in the control group Regs. Despite how the plan might read, the rules say the participant doesn't have a termination of employment until completely leaving the control group. Case in point, I was at US subsidiary of foreign oil company that sent people to US for 3 year assignments. We constantly struggled to get letters from parent company confirming termination from the parent on people who had transferred back many years before.

You're over complicating it... the consent is only required at the ASD. It is a specific, singular event. There is no subsequent effect. What occurred on that date was binding on that date (unless the plan has some very unique clause allowing recalculation post-ASD).

But the plan can have more stringent requirement than that, which the original poster states is the case here (first paragraph of post).

Is the $800 window benefit a single life annuity or 10-yr certain? Can they elect it as any other optional form or only as stated?

The IRS publications clearly use the word "and"... 5-years and one of the following: age 59.5+, disabled, death, or first-time homebuyer. (page 63, pub 590 http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p590.pdf )

I'm happy to be shown otherwise as I'm not a payroll specialist, but my thinking is: I pay you a salary of $500 and should have deducted $10 for the pension. Instead, I give you the full $500 and put $10 into the pension plan. You now have $510. The $10 is unreported income.

I'll agree the AR is ordinary income but I still disagree about 409A because of reasons discussed above. See my post on May 23 at 10:56am. The section of preamble that was quoted says amounts from sources like AR are not subject to 409A unless they meet a list of criteria. As noted, I feel your situation fails the second criteria because the AR became due while the doc was still in and had effective control over the practice.

Now we're talking about having to do a correction, aren't we? If the employer was making the contributions for the employees, then you have income to the employees that was never included on their W-2. If the employer didn't make the contribs, then you have them material violation of the plan terms. I'd also add that even if they aren't in the union group anymore, if the CBA addresses this, then you might still have a take away and might still have to negotiate it. Keep in mind the right to make the contributions was acquired by being under the CBA.

Good point Steelerfan. Stuart might want to review the doc's employment contract, if any to see if/how it pulls the AR into the compensation picture. Also, on that line of thinking, while prior year(s) AR may be considered in determining the doc's salary, does anything in that process tie his new salary to the coming year's AR?

This doesn't answer your question but for what it's worth, Q&A-7 under the same section says you can default someone to having elected a direct rollover if they don't make an election w/in a certain time period.

Sorry, my bad, I took the wrong emphasis. I'm trying to clarify your question on the distribution. Let me try to reword: you have two methods at hand; disregarding the PT distribution, the variance is minor and can be explained; so that just leaves what is the proper handling of the distribution, should it be added back or not? Is that a fair assessment so far? What is the impact of adding back the distribution? The problem is that the funds liquidated for the distribution ceased to generate earnings. So adding it back to the PT's side of the equation will give PT more earnings/losses than otherwise. But I'd go back to two things: materiality and documented client direction. How big is the distribution relative to the overall account balance and how big are the earnings in question. And "could you send me an email stating you want me to use the spreadsheet and method you provided versus my normal method, so I can document the reason for the change of procedure" (I apologize if I made a bad assumption there about which method is whose). Anyone else have any insights?

Can anyone show actual precidence where the IRS took a basic fact pattern like this (which has no appearance of being abusive) and ruled that payment received for realized AR as part of a stock transaction was compensation? Let's look at it from this angle... why would the value of the stock not include part of the unrealized value of AR? It is an asset of the corp and therefore the shareholder has some right to the value in it (presuming the AR was excluded in arriving at the $300K). Since Stuart says above that the physical assets are owned by another company and leased to the corp, then the main assets of the corp which have value are 1) the doctor's book of patients (generally valued at a factor of prior years' receipts), 2) current cash/equities on hand, and 3) current accounts receivable. The difference between cash on hand and AR is liquidity and risk of default. What you have is a contingent installment payment on the sale of the stock.

DTH - yes, I agree w/ your understanding on all 3 questions. That is how we administer it. Knowing how HR likes to slide people into extra benefits if they can during recruiting, you have to be very strict about determining if the person qualified as a "leased" ee. One-year (we assumed cummulative versus continuous), substantially full time, under company's control/direction, and an unrelated third-party involved in the relationship. Those last two kick out a number of contractors; e.g., we had an electrician w/ his own business who did full time contract work for us for two years and the HR rep tried to argue "leased" ee status when we hired him. But it can also pick up some people who are on full time assignment from less traditional places, like engineering firms. (always go back to your facts and circumstances). Note: we determined that a person can leave work and become a "leased" ee after the fact. Since it applies for vesting and eligibility, the impact is for someone who terminated before full vesting.