BG5150

I am not a big fan of this arrangement. I read somewhere that the DoL is not a big fan of putting money in people's accounts and then taking it away from them either. If the employer wants to have its PS contribution amortized over 26 payments, I'd suggest they take the amount they were going to deposit in participants' accounts and put in it a separate bank account, then allocate it after plan-year end. What happens if Janey Mulroney has $3,000 put in her account during the year, but it's only worth $2,500 at year-end when it gets shared among the eligible participants? Does the Employer want to take the full deduction, even though only $2,500 of it really got allocated to participants' accounts? And how do you figure out the gain or loss in the account if prior years' PS money is in there? Are you time-weighting the returns?

From the first link: It doesn't take into account, however, the 25% of compensation deduction limit that Mike references above. So, in a small plan, a combination of all three limits may come into play.

Could the employer "lend" the employee his commisison check (or a part thereof) early? Say, give him $2,000 up front. Then he can pre-pay a bunch of loan payments and be ahead of the game.

I'd do it, but there would be no guarantee that wouldn't accidentally make everyone 100% vested or delete everyone's birth date by accident (or on purpose )

I would try to do it via DER.

But 5-ton bombs are way cooler!

I think you are okay, since the match itself is under 4%, and you are not matching any deferrals that are more than 6% of pay.

Or you could just hand-do the calculations, subtracting the zero salaries from the participant count. And a corollary to that: you can export the test to Word (or other word processor) and manually delete them. But, you will still have to manually override the calculations.

Do you have a list of the affected people in a spreadsheet? You could export all the participants and their termination in the plan and do some sort of v-lookup with the other list. Then weed those people out, change the termination date to blank and import them. Then import the correct termination dates to over write the blank ones. An eligibility trans action post here, a reversal there, and a repost somewhere else and you'd be good. (I think)

I would put the money in a suspense account in the plan and use it to offset the next contribution. I am not a big fan of returning money to the company once it's invested in the trust.

Basically, the way I read that is: If company B want to make a 50,000 PS, the the 50,000 gets allocated across participants from both companies. The match, I'm not so sure about.

Or under 21. Or those with less than 1 yr of service.

In other words: Were there any NCHE's who entered the plan during 2008, but terminated before year end? (Or HCE's for that matter)

I have a 401(k) plan that has as a distribution option installment payments figured over the life expectancy of the participant. Say a person selects this method. But three years later, she wants/needs the money. Can she cease those payments and take a lump-sum distribution for the remaining amount?

You can have the money deducted now, if you are still in the same plan year. You may or may not want to investigate whether or not earnings should be applied tot he missed contributions.

Shouldn't the CPA know about stuff like this?

Does "after the close of the plan year" mean after Dec 31 (for calendar year plans, obviously)? Or does it mean "after all contributions for the plan year have been made"? There is a significant difference. Using the latter may mean that distributions might not be done until the following September or October. So if a participant terminates in January, then he or she may have to wait 21 or 22 months to rollover an account that may or may not be getting an insignificant contribution (comparable tot he rest of the account blance).

A?

ADP/ACP testing is one thing, but determining a profit sharing, forfeiture or safe harbor allocation is another matter; you can't pick and choose which comp you want to use.

Should we assume that is the reason it's your "old" job? I don't know why they did it that way. Actually, it sucked, b/c there was no taxes taken out of the bonuses, and I had to take a hit come tax time.

In my old job, I got paid on a W-2 and our bonus was paid on a 1099.

This is the only correction of early inclusion I found in EPCRS:

If the match is a stated match (rather than discretionary) I think they do. Plus, the plan could get disqualified if the ER doesn't put in the money.

But, if we file that Schedule R (with only identifying information), will the IRS notice the abbreviated Schedule A and no Schedule D?

I think the only thing an early retirement provision will get you might be accelerated vesting for someone (to 100%).