Bill Presson

Happy birthday, Dave!

Congratulations, Mike!!

We're a bit of a mix because we've acquired 6 additional firms in a little over two years. So, every office works somewhat differently. We plan to be a hybrid where an administrator will be responsible for almost everything. They might also have an assigned assistant if their case load is large enough. We have several shared assistants too. We do plan to carve out onboarding of new clients, trust accounting and an optional distribution dept for employers that elect. We outsource our IT and then have a few other specific people like our CEO, me, our business manager and director of marketing. Most of the former owners (as well as some new hires) are providing client relationship/business development services. But it's working well now and we know where we're heading. That was the biggest struggle, but is now making things easier.

It's like the first hint that Christmas is coming! :)

Auditors are required to become comfortable with the plan and assets for time periods prior to the beginning of the audit. So they will typically review the plan back a few years to make sure they can report the numbers properly. If you are the auditor for the plan, your firm should have established practices or contact the Employee Benefit Plan Audit Quality Center if you need additional direction.

Ha!

Smith Barney has been gone for several years now.

Yeah, I miss not seeing who admired my comments. :)

Ha! I meant "about". Edited mine so I don't look so terribly stupid.

I also like a good discussion about badly written regulations, so no disagreement there

In their note, it should reference something about a reconciling item to the 5500. Your beginning balances shouldn't change.

I'm always amazed (and I don't know why) at people coming to this board with "questions" and getting upset at the answers. If you're so confident in your position, why come here?

Agreed, but I've never seen one that had everyone in their own group AND had an integrated allocation formula.

It is an operational failure and a stupid one. If it will pass a4, why didn't they just amend the plan and put everyone in their own group? I would also want to avoid the semantics of "the individual partners then select their own contribution level" as that's a failure as well. Any chance the PS amount that the HCEs selected could really be a deferral?

I believe that's just a testing method and not an allocation method. See if it's an option when you run the a4 testing.

I never could absorb this statement...

Two things: 1. I "liked" your post and got a message that I wasn't allowed. Odd. 2. I spent a lot of time on PIX in my early years. Incredible resource during the early days of the internet. My screeching 2400 baud modem was a welcome sound. Got to know, Larry Starr, Derrin Watson, Jim Norman, Rick Block, Lou Filliger, Rich Bednarski, Doug Jolley, etc, etc. Great group to learn from

It's been awhile since I've run a plan on relius, but I thought that when you choose to run the test, you could enter the prior year amount. If I could wander around the software, I think I could find it. I know this isn't much. Good luck.

She may be worried that this is considered earned income and she is limited or it reduces her SS. We know that's not the case, but she may not.

If the loans are outside the plan, I agree it's an issue. But if it's just money that has been used for premiums, it's not.

Agree with the question of how it rolled in. Could have been from another plan. But I'm not sure the $90k loan is necessarily an issue. It's likely to be a premium loan.

Ask the people that are going to do the solo 401k. They may be better able to help because they may have had the same question. With that being said, why don't you put the money you would put in a SEP into the 401k?

Can you do what you are asking to do? Yes. Can you be successful at it? Less likely. Most CPA firms that do TPA work in house with people that have never worked in a TPA firm are doing a multitude of things wrong. It seems to be an obvious niche, but, for some reason, a great many CPAs just can't understand the way the 400 section of the code works. And I worked for on of the 30 largest CPA firms in the nation for 12+ years. So, I recommend buying a TPA firm or hiring an experienced professional from a TPA firm to start your practice.

TPAJake: Austin asked if you were processing the payroll and you said you were. But I think he meant actually producing the payroll, collecting hours and issuing checks, etc. I don't think you're doing that. What I think you're doing is the same thing that many daily recordkeepers do, which is get (or create) the file/report from accessing the payroll and then "processing" it into the recordkeeper's system and triggering the ACH. So that may answer a couple of his examples, but still doesn't get to the heart of the matter. Most of his issues are dependent on the payroll being correct. For the most part, you don't control that nor do you control whether you get correct information on family relationships, etc. So you're still dependent on correct information. I've wrestled with this for the past few years. Some days, I'm convinced we need to do it and some, I just can't imagine why.

Everyone seems to be focusing on getting a 2848 to allow the IRS to speak with someone. But Peter seems to be asking whether a TPA is governed by Circular 230. " If one sets aside the bit about written advice, a TPA who doesn’t write or speak as a taxpayer’s representative concerning an examination or a correction procedure might not “practice” before the IRS, and so might not be governed by its conduct rules." Peter, can you be more specific as to why you're concerned about this and how that involves a 2848?