movedon

Brother, there were rude blowhards and their fan club around here long before you got here, and they'll be here long after you've moved on with your life. It ain't you.

You're going to get opinions here from the perspective of people who are generally on the employer's side when these kinds of mistakes happen. The idea that the little guy (the employee) should at the very least share the blame, if not shoulder all of it, for what is primarily the employer's (or the employer's service provider, i.e., the people you're talking to here) mistake is deeply ingrained. This notion is even supported somewhat by the IRS's fix for this sort of thing. OTOH, this is a common mistake and assuming your wife made a proper deferral election the fix is that she probably has some money coming to her. She should start by talking to whoever at her job is in charge of the plan. Ultimately, you'll have to decide whether the fix they offer feels satisfying or whether you want to spend some money on independent professional help that answers to you (like a lawyer) to find out for sure if it's fair. A do-it-yourself sort of a guy might be able to get the general idea of what the fix should look like by googling something like "employer didn't withhold 401(k)" and then focusing on authoritative results like the IRS.

mlp0816, you will soon learn that pointing out the rudeness of "well known gurus" and "basic smart asses" is frowned upon around here.

Well, for one thing, someone has to do a calculation every year to determine the contribution. Also, someone has to cash the giant commission checks on the whole life policy, and some guys at the insurance company need to come up with marketing brochures that make 3% returns on a fixed annuity sound like a good deal. They usually go over that in the Bahamas with their 100 top agents once a year.

*DISCLAIMER - this is hot air on the internet, not tax or legal advice - you need to consult your accountant on this.* I think your accountant will tell you that $13,000 of the $15,500 profit sharing contribution is deductible for 2018 instead of 2017 if you so choose (assuming you have income to support that deduction in 2018), it doesn't matter how the broker "classifies" it, and you don't have a problem.

I'm guessing a lot of the argument for and against a government option has to do with popular notions about the glories of capitalism and the depravities of alternatives. The notion (that I agree with) that greedier employers would stay with their current private plans while those that "care" about their employees would consider a state-sponsored plan is telling. By "care" I mean "think it's more profitable to care."

Yeah, this is only saying that multiple 403(b) plans of a single employer (not the employee, who used to be considered the employer) are aggregated for annual additions. What's new about that I guess is not that a single employer's 403(b)s needed to be aggregated for 415 but that there is no longer a requirement that each employee's 415 limit consider 403(b)s of yet other unrelated employers. Probably a widely ignored rule anyway - who asks their 403(b) clients for information regarding employees participating in unrelated employer 403(b) plans? If you go to pub 571 you'll see the familiar rule re qualified plans and common control two paragraphs after the one sited - unchanged, as far as I can tell.

I for one am relieved that everyone is being properly respectful of "well known gurus."

I didn't read the memo, but I remember that law firm as the firm who wrote a "famous" memo in support of a springing cash value 412(i) plan scheme about fifteen years ago. I wonder how those cases played out. Apparently worked out OK for the firm if they're still around cranking out memos.

Thanks, Lois. It's a little different, but it looks like I can get to pretty much the same view as before using the "content items only" you suggested.

In the good old days, when I hovered over "message boards," I'd get a little drop-down menu where I could select "latest messages" and get a list of threads that had posts in the last day or so. One entry per thread, regardless of the number of posts. Good times. Now when I do the aforementioned hover and click, I get a little error warning and no threads. If I click "activity" I get a list of what seems to be every post from the last day or whatever time period, and I'm not really liking that view much. Is a list of active threads like before somewhere and I'm just missing it?

Hi, Matt. As for retirement plans (can't help you with the cafeteria/health stuff), ASPPA is good for education and credentials. I don't know of any trade show specifically for software. The main players for small TPAs are FTWilliam, Datair and Relius. I'll point out what anyone else who posts here will likely point out - trying to "get in" to the pension administration business from a point of zero pension administration experience is ill-advised. You'd be better off hiring someone or better yet just forming a relationship with a consultant who can provide you the expertise in a way that you can pass through as a value-added service. If you do that (the latter) for a while and decide you want to push into that business, you can maybe then do it from a position of strength with a bit of support from someone already in the business.

My standard advice for the client that wants to engage in malarkey that might or might not be legal but is almost certain to result in operational failures is - the potential cost of cleaning this foolishness up later vastly exceeds the imagined benefit of doing it in the first place. My cite is "every plan, ever."

I've never found a clear answer to this question, either. For the state or two where I've bothered to look at the state instructions (talking about personal returns here - never looked for a corp), there was no mention of the timing of the contributions and extending the state return, or any mention of the deduction at all really, since the states' method for determining income was to start with federal AGI and add things back, and retirement contributions weren't one of the add-backs. On the other hand, you are "deducting" the contribution for state purposes, so it stands to reason the state return should be extended. I always just advised doing it. It's a small thing (usually), and not worth the risk to me to tell someone not to do it.

How about the exclusive benefit rule?

I used Relius to do a ton of EGTRRA restatements, and I thought it was fine. Price tempted me over to FTW for PPA restatements, and it is also fine.

I don't know the answer to your question, but I do know that you have the best avatar by far on benefitslink.

"Paying him as an independent contractor" does not make him an independent contractor. Assuming they want to continue treating him like an employee and don't want to deal with the Puerto Rican retirement plan rules, why not just exclude residents of Puerto Rico and then give him a raise to make him feel good about it?

Unfortunately, I think your issue is a little cloudy as to what the "right" way is to fix it, but I can tell you from experience it would not be out of character for Fidelity to insist on doing something their way even if it's 100% wrong and even in the face of you obviously knowing what you're talking about. I know they love issuing 1099s when money moves around even when the situation is clearly not a distribution. If they treated the money as a rollover in the first place, then they probably issued a 1099 for 2014. Your best bet is going to be to argue up the food chain until you get someone who is both willing to listen to you with an open mind and also has the discretion to do something about it. There's as at least one employee in their corporate history that meets those criteria, but sadly I don't recall his name. Even if you find him, you might have to yell at him until he almost cries.

It's very unlikely that a ubiquitous file type will ever be unreadable - assuming we continue to have electricity.

Why wouldn't pdfs be usable for years and years to come?

4/20? Gee Dave, I had no idea that's how you, er, rolled.

I've never heard safe harbor used as a verb and I like it . So due to refunds you're missing out on $7,500 in deferrals this year and some amount of match, which ostensibly translates into a few grand in tax cost to you. How much of a pay cut would you take if you left? What about intangibles like your overall happiness, etc.? Barring some other issues, I can't imagine why you would be that worried about the 401(k) plan - these amounts seem trivial compared to your overall compensation. You could always go to your boss and show him a little spreadsheet illustrating the tax cost to you of not being able to max out and ask him to give you a comparable bonus outside the plan to make you feel better about it. 401(k) plans are nice, but don't blow the value of that tax deferral out of proportion. Also, unless your new employer is going to be you, there's no guarantee you won't have a similar problem in the future. A plan that is safe harbor this year may not be next year.

So what I'm hearing is that you are acknowledging that everyone who has responded has a problem with this set-up?