GBurns

BeBunk As my grandaughters often advise, You need to chill ! You have been given excellent advice here. I suggest that you re-read these posts and pay particular attention to the sequence advised. Make sure a full and competent presentation of all facts and circumstances, past and specially present, are presented to the judge in divorce court. I cannot think of anything that should be left out. Then repeat with the PA if necessary. Neither the judge or the PA has anything to gain by being unfair, but since they are only human they will respond to whatever attitude you present. Stop jumping ahead and stop seeking loopholes and "gotchas". Good luck and let us know the outcome. You never know who else has the same problem.

That was only the example. We do not know how many employess or how much money was involved.. All we know is: "we have an employer who sent the biweekly employee deductions twice. And they were traded/allocated to participant accounts twice..." So we know that there was more than 1 participant. Plus: "For example, if the total payroll for that week ending was $20,000, if we reverse the trades, we may only get $10,000 back." So we know that more than $50 is at stake.

I do not think that anything could be added the reply from J Simmons.

I do not think that any of us could or should tell the Trustees what to do. We have no info and we have no crystal balls left. Putting money into funds or stocks has always been a gamble. So sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.

The problem is that not everyone sees the same shades of color in the same place. One man's poison is another man's meat.

When was the election made? When is the Plan year ? What does the SPD and Plan document say ? In essence, Why can he not use FSA money to pay the premium ?

If there is no coverage then there is no premium due, is there ? So a refund of unused premium is proper. Premiums are only due for periods for which there is coverage. So a refund of the proportional amount (18th-30th) is due. It is rferred to as unearned premium.

Bill There is much more than recordkeeping involved.

But most employees are not enrolled using such IT systems. In fact, it seems a large number are still enrolled manually. I do not know what actual enrollment experience your opinions are based on, but I passed a 100 employers long long ago. With recurring annual enrollments as a multiplier I would say that I have years of extensice experience with many different benefits plans. This year is a low year, I am only at 6 so far. 2007 was around 20. I cannot recall any plan that would not allow changes during the "confirmation" window. After all it is only for the convenience of the employer's admin function and not allowing changes could be seen as restricting an employee's right without pressure of law.

It should not matter if something is missed. You have no idea what they know and think. It could be that your display of "knowledge" etc prevails over any uncertainty they might have. Righteous indignation influences people. It could be that they made serious errors with others and want to settle the issue before it gets out of hand. Maybe they do not want you to rock the boat. It could be that some senior executives have been affected in the same way and they do not know how many non-execs have also been affected. They might want to atone. You just do not know, so why prejudge and give up. It is the squeaky wheel that gets the oil.

Isn't the purpose of the "confirmation" period to allow the employee to confirm choices AND to make any changes that they deem necessary ? What does the SPD say about this "confirmation" period etc ?

Does anyone really know how the"system" really works ? I hear true and false aboout IOU's. I hear that the money was and was not borrowed. What is the real status ?

An "enrollment window" exists as a convenience to an employer and is not law. What matters is plan year start date. Since most changes have to be made prospectively, an employee should be able to make any change before that date.

No, we did not miss the boat. I was responding to the thought of correcting by changing the next salary deferral as posited by the OP in paragraph 3. Are you suggesting in B that the employer keep the employee deferral ?

R Vatalaro "individual schedule C's" ? Are you sure ? Notice that J Simmons responded regarding C corporations. The type of business entities involved could be relevant. If the various practices are corporations, you might already have a multiple employer plan.

You want to ignore the salary deduction election agreement, then you want to "cook" the payroll YTD figures. Then you want to keep some of what was deducted from the employee on the payroll. What else will you think of next ? Isn't the hole deep enough already ?

CinC Most employees are not desk jockeys. I doubt that most employees even have a desk and thus most employees would not have a terminal. I doubt that most have an email account on the job website. I also wonder How they would even know that there is email or something to look at. I draw my reaction from experiences over the last few years. I have had administrators of large hospitals and schools who thought that since there was an email account for the employee it meant that the employee knew how to access, had use of a terminal, the terminal allowed access, only to find out that only a few met those conditions. Allthough there are many computer terminals in a hospital not all can access email. The same applies to many many other types of organizations. I even have had experiences with fortune 1000 companies where intercompany emails from executive to executive were being filtered. I hate to tell you what happened sometimes with broadcast emails. So since most employees have no desk and no terminal, assuming they have an email account and know of the email, it is subjective.

This might be helpful: http://www.dol.gov/ebsa/pdf/fab2008-2.pdf And from the DOL HIPAA Compliance Guide: Question 24 -- Nondiscrimination in premiums or contributions Does the plan comply with HIPAA’s nondiscrimination rules regarding individual premium or contribution rates? ................................................  Under ERISA section 702(b) and 29 CFR 2590.702©, plans may not require an individual to pay a premium or contribution that is greater than a premium or contribution for a similarly situated individual enrolled in the plan on the basis of any health factor. For example, it would be impermissible for a plan to require certain full-time employees to pay a higher premium than other full-time employees based on their prior claims experience.  Nonetheless, the nondiscrimination rules do not prohibit a plan from providing a reward based on adherence to a wellness program. See ERISA section 702(b)(2)(B); 29 CFR 2590.702(b)(2)(ii) and ©(3). Final rules for wellness programs were published on December 13, 2006, at 71 FR 75014. These rules permit rewards that are not contingent on an individual meeting a standard related to a health factor. In addition, these rules permit rewards that are contingent on an individual meeting a standard related to a health factor if:  The total reward for all the plan’s wellness programs that require satisfaction of a standard related to a health factor is limited – generally, it must not exceed 20 percent of the cost of employee-only coverage under the plan. If dependents (such as spouses and/or dependent children) may participate in the wellness program, the reward must not exceed 20 percent of the cost of the coverage in which an employee and any dependents are enrolled.  The program must be reasonably designed to promote health and prevent disease.  The program must give individuals eligible to participate the opportunity to qualify for the reward at least once per year.  The reward must be available to all similarly situated individuals. The program must allow a reasonable alternative standard (or waiver of initial standard) for obtaining the reward to any individual for whom it is unreasonably difficult due to a medical condition, or medically inadvisable, to satisfy the initial standard.  The plan must disclose in all materials describing the terms of the program the availability of a reasonable alternative standard (or the possibility of a waiver of the initial standard). A model notice is provided in the Model Disclosures on page 81.

That's just it. The devil is in the details that we do not know.

The driver needs to have a license which is issued after a standard competency test and which gets some continuity and "regulation" by means of points for certain offenses or rating by insurance companies. Consultants might or might not claim credentials from any of a sometimes meaningless alphabet soup with no way of their track record being checked. Unfortunately while you will quickly get some idea of the competence of a driver, it is a whole lot more difficult and very expensive to find out about advisors.

Would the wrongfully excluded employee benefit also ?

"if the employee has the ability to effectively access electronic documents at the work location and if the employee uses a computer as an integral part of his/her duties" is an extremely subjective standard to use. What many employers think of as being the status quo is sometimes just theory. In reality computer access to electronic communications is sometimes limited and employee knowledge, awareness and use is ineffective. orm If I were you, I would summarize what you have learned here so far, that is in your favour, support that with excerpted cites and make a presentation to whomever is in authority asking that the situation be corrected in a mutually satisfactory manner. Bearing in mind, but not saying so, that you are mainly at fault for not having read the notices etc.

LMPett You have not yet explained how the HRA would/could get a contribution from the participant as was originally proposed by J Simmons. Everything you have posted and quoted refers to employer contribution, nothing refers to or even implies a participant contribution.

We seem to have strayed far from the OP. The question was " Is it possible for the employee to pay for the individual premiums with pre-tax dollars through the cafeteria plan?". The answer is Yes. It seems we strayed when someone introduced reimbursement of the premium. This was not the issue. As for reimbursing pre-taxed premiums, these were addressed in posts #13 and#14 and by Masteff.

I do not see where there is any provision for any employee (or COBRA participant) share or contribution.