Peter Gulia

ESOP Guy is right that the computer knows only that a .pdf is uploaded, not what its text states. While this discussion shows a range of views, it seems to me that filing by the due date what the plan's administrator can truthfully state on that day should be better than not having done an act that shows attention to the filing duty. Of course, the administrator should follow by completing and revising the report as promptly as it prudently can do.

K2retire, for the situation you described, will the computer systems accept processing of a 5500 submission if no .pdf is uploaded in the slot for the accountant's report?

TPAs have told me that the computer systems won't process a 5500 submission unless a box in Schedule H line 3d is marked or at least some .pdf is uploaded in the Accountant's Opinion slot. Is this correct?

What benefit does your hypothetical plan provide to a nonspouse beneficiary? How did the plan's administrator discover that the participant had died? If it received a death certificate, who furnished the certificate? What evidence did the plan's administrator receive that causes it to believe that the participant has no surviving spouse? A related difficulty is whether a plan's administrator must act affirmatively to cause the plan to pay a required minimum benefit if doing so would require the administrator to decide a beneficiary's identity before anyone has submitted a claim (or the administrator has denied all claims submitted). In the past 31 years, I haven't found fully satisfying answers to the tension between rushing to meet a 401(a)(9) provision and taking time to decide the correct distributee. Reaching-out efforts might invite false claims, and might do so in circumstances in which the administrator might lack evidence to help it detect a false claim. For a situation in which a distribution is required but the plan's administrator has no ready payee, has any BenefitsLink reader had an experience with paying a distribution to a court of the county in which the administrator believes the decedent to have resided (based on the participant's address in the plan's records)? If so, did paying a distribution to the court help, or make the situation more difficult?

Do prototype and volume-submitter documents made for the current cycle that ends April 2016 allow choices for this point?

Beyond an allocation of medical claims expenses, does one or more of the agreements between the insured/administrator/employer and the insurer/claims administrator allocate plan-administration expenses?

The usual way an SEC-registered investment fund or its service provider might be mentioned in a Schedule C is not necessarily as a service provider to the plan but rather as a "person [that] provided you [the plan's administrator] disclosures on eligible indirect compensation". That there are 30 funds does not necessarily mean that there are 30 persons that furnished disclosures. For example, if six of the 30 funds have Strategic Advisers or Fidelity Management & Research as a fund's manager, all of those funds might have Fidelity Distributors Corporation as the funds' underwriter, and FDC might be the person that furnished EIC disclosures. The instructions state: "[P]rovide as many entries in line 1b as necessary to identify the person or persons who provided you [the plan's administrator] with the necessary disclosures regarding the eligible indirect compensation."

Was the participant you describe a highly-compensated employee? Is the employer willing to amend the plan uniformly for all participants?

Coordinating the deliveries might mean sending the summary annual report about a week sooner than would be required under the SAR rule alone. If a calendar-year plan's Form 5500 report is filed on November 15, the summary annual report becomes due on January 15. But a plan's administrator and recordkeeper might do the work so the summary annual report can be sent with the Q4 account statements in the first five business days of January.

David Rigby and Calavera, thank you for the helpful information. Will any certified public accountant contribute?

No, that's not what I would advise. Rather, remembering the service contract's terms (and related information) is among several points of information a service provider could consider.

Without any observation about others' suggestions, what does your service contract say about what address you must or may communicate to?

For others who are curious, here’s New Mexico’s “Vaccine Purchasing Act”. http://www.nmlegis.gov/Sessions/15%20Regular/final/SB0121.pdf Perhaps we’ll know a little more about ERISA preemption after the Supreme Court of the United States decides the Vermont Green Mountain Care Board case. http://www.scotusblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/14-181_amicus_np_Zelinsky.authcheckdam.pdf If the money is significant, might a health plan exposed to New Mexico pay the tax and petition for a refund?

ETA, thank you for the helpful information. It's interesting that your ERPA requirements are double my lawyer requirements. One wonders how ERPA requirements compare to an enrolled actuary's requirements?

I hope BenefitsLink readers will help me crowdsource a little academic task. The goal is to get a general sense, which at this stage may be anecdotal rather than scientific, of how many continuing-professional-education hours are required of each of several kinds of professionals. Are actuaries, accountants, attorneys, enrolled agents, enrolled retirement plan agents, certified financial analysts, certified financial planners, and other professionals similar or different in what each license requires? How many CPE hours? In what measurement period? Is the CPE requirement a condition of a governmental license or privilege? Or is the CPE requirement a condition of using an association's trademark or certification mark? I'll start: I must do 12 CLE hours a year. But this need not be evenly paced because there are three-year cycles, and there are limited carry-forwards of some credits not used in a previous cycle. This CLE requirement is a condition of my license to practice law in Pennsylvania. So how many continuing-professional-education hours are required of you?

Imagine an automatic-contribution arrangement under a governmental (non-ERISA) plan that does not provide a permissible withdrawal and so need not be an eligible automatic contribution arrangement. (The plan allows only salary-reduction contributions; there is no nonelective or matching contribution.) Imagine also that the State statute that enables the plan and its automatic-contribution arrangement does not require an annual notice. Even if no law requires it, should the plan's administrator do annual notices? What arguments might one make for omitting annual notices?

Could this idea be done with a profit-sharing plan?

But what if a retirement plan has 35,000 participants and the incremental mailing would result in incremental expenses of $25,000 charged against the plan's assets? If, as My 2 Cents suggests, a fiduciary might find that few participants read the information, shouldn't such a fiduciary at least consider ways to reduce expenses that lower participants' accounts?

I'm showing my lack of memory that results from not using the information in work experiences. While I've advised trustees of defined-benefit pension plans, I've never designed a plan that needed to worry about the 401(a)(26) rule. Doghouse, thank you for reminding me about that constraint.

What about three pension plans, so each owner makes his or her plan-design decisions, funding decisions, and investment decisions, and so none of the owners subsidizes another?

Perhaps there's also room for a mailing efficiency. A plan's administrator could ask its recordkeeper to enclose the 2016 summary annual report in the same envelope that mails the 2017Q4 account statement.

Does this law change mean that a participant might get her December 31, 2017 account statement (in early January 2018 [see 17 C.F.R. 240.10b-10(b)(2)] before she gets her 2016 summary annual report (by January 15, 2018)?

Flyboyjohn, thank you for your further thoughts. All the players considered the Schedule C reporting about a change in the IQPA. The employer described above is not my client.

David Rigby, thank you for the good critical thinking. It happens that the employer I described isn't worried about accounting to shareholders because the company has only one owner, and the owner agrees with the plan's administrator. The plan's administrator is considering filing the IQPA report because the administrator believes doing so is less expensive (for the plan) than replacing the IQPA. Thanks again for the good thinking, and maybe smart BenefitsLink mavens will spot issues we missed.

Consider this scenario: An employee-benefit plan's administrator (the plan's sponsor) and the independent qualified public accountant disagree about a point of accounting for the plan's financial statements. The administrator considers its knowledge of accounting superior to the IQPA's knowledge. The IQPA threatens to issue an adverse report. The administrator says "bring it on." The administrator does not fear that checking the "adverse" box at Schedule H's part III would trigger an examination because EBSA and IRS both have open examinations, with teams of examiners using office space in the plan's sponsor's headquarters. Also, the administrator does not fear the IQPA's explanation because the administrator confidently believes the IQPA is wrong. Beyond widening and intensifying the open examinations, is there any other unwelcome consequence that results from checking the adverse box and attaching the report that explains the IQPA's reasons for its adverse opinion?