Kristina

A welfare benefit plan can indeed mark both the Trust and General assets of the employer. A Qualified Retirement plan can never check the General assets of the employer box.

I agree with Bird. It includes the receivable contributions, but not receivable income or interest or payables or expenses for the plan year, but after the end of the plan year.

It is my understanding that the manual signature needs to be a 'wet signature'. DocuSign does not meet that requirement. Since you are using the E-Signature Alternative, I think your clients would be most familiar with pen and ink signing and faxing the form back to you.

If fewer than 11 1099-Rs were filed for 2017 for the Plan or Sponsor, the IRS will not impose a late filing penalty. The 1099-R is important for the participant in the future to verify that the IRA was created from a rollover. Not filing now could bite him later.

The requirement for all welfare plans to file the 5500 Series is part of the Modernization Program which was planned for 2019, but has not yet received the budget necessary to go forward. There will be no change in this until September when another budget vote is expected to be held.

At what point, if any, would you contact the DOL? Or give the employees a clue as to what is happening? This is kind of a situation makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck.

So would the answers here be different if the dollar amount were $19,500? The fact that the money was returned to the plan, IMHO is a good thing. That being said one must consider that the money can be considered forfeited and reported as other income. Records should be kept of which participants had money returned, how much and when. There should be a plan procedure for making those participants whole with income if/when they show up. I don't think that considering a check that was never cashed is paying out the benefits. However, the plan is between a rock and a hard place because if you add them to the 8955SSA as an A code, you have to provide a statement to the participant as to what was reported on the 8955SSA or risk a penalty. Very Difficult if you don't know how to contact them. This is a situation where it would be useful to be able to send them to the PBGC as missing participants. But you can't do that because the plan is ongoing. You can't just make it go away. There needs to be a plan with the participants' best interest in mind.

No one has been admonished for incorrect or missing characteristic codes, yet.

You could just do the 1099R as a death distribution fbo the wife. No withholding. When she files her taxes she will have the BoA paperwork that the amount was rolled over. Should there be an IRS inquiry, you should have the paperwork as to how the check was requested and how it was written. Assuming, of course, that it is impossible to get the check reissued.

The 1099R is filed in January following the distribution/rollover, especially this year since the 2018 1099R has not been released by the IRS yet. The 1099R does not tell the receiving investment company about the distribution/rollover. Its only purpose is to tell the IRS that there has been a distribution/rollover and how much, if any is taxable. You need to provide a statement showing the information on the participant's account including when the Roth was initially effective and the participant's basis in the Roth portion.

Wait for the IRS letter about a late Form 8955-SSA. If your client has a reasonable cause for the late filing, that can be addressed at that time. You need the IRS correspondence to pay any penalties otherwise you are just chucking money to the IRS. By the way DFVCP means Delinquent Filer Voluntary Compliance Program which is a DOL program when the 5500 Series is late. IRS will not honor the DFVCP if a required Form 8955-SSA for the filing year was not also filed, even though DFVCP does not cover the Form 8955-SSA

Form 5330 would outline when the penalty and the filing is due.

Because there is a common law employee (or a non-owner employee) regardless of whether he is a Trustee or not means the ERISA Title I requirement for the bond applies. If they hire more employees will those employees have to serve as Trustees too?

EFAST will not give you a notice if the attachment you attached was attached as an Accountant's Opinion. While there is an attachment validation for every attachment received by EFAST, it is a machine validation for certain parameters. It would take a human to determine that your attachment was not what it was presented as. Don't think human reviews do not happen, they do. There is no other option than to file amended filings with EFAST.

It has always been my understanding that a plan is not terminated until all plan assets have been distributed. Since a MRC is being awaited and the balance of the plan assets remain in the plan, the plan has not terminated for 5500 purposes even though the PBGC has approved a termination date. The plan year will continue to be the plan year until all plan assets are distributed and then the date of the final distribution becomes the last day of the last plan year.

The appendix to DOL Reg. 2520.104b-10 lists the fields on the 5500 series that are reported on the SAR. Corrective Distributions and deemed distributions are not reported. The SAR is NOT supposed to balance.

There are a few thousand large plan 5500s filed on the extended date without the audit report each year. A letter, which was probably mailed within a few days of the filing, is received from the government noting the lack of the audit report and the fact that the filing is incomplete. The recipient is given 45 days after the date of the letter to file an amended filing including the audit report. If the amended filing is not received, the filing will be declared incomplete and penalties could be assessed back to the original due date. Most of the time, the plan administrator has no control over when the audit report is completed. I believe the DOL is aware of the difficulty and within reason will work with the plan administrator, but there are limits.

Accurate communication is a desirable quality in firms handling money.

I have not heard of any D reporting raising the audit flag. And even if it did, it is more important to stop any benefit notification letters and the time suck to respond to participants who were paid out years ago.

You can always report anyone who should have been reported in prior years as a B code. I'm assuming you have the information necessary to calculate their benefits. If they have never been reported as an A, that is not your issue. (I've not heard of this being an issue unless the plan comes under an IRS audit.) Then be sure to report all D codes and you are done with that participant.

I would be concerned about reporting DVPs on a later form as that would give an auditor ammunition. I would instead file the 8955-SSA as soon as I knew who should have been reported. This will at least show good faith on the Plan Sponsor's part.

A caution on using the prior year forms for a 2017 short year/final filing: You must complete the filing by midnight EST on 12/31/17 for a 2017 (signed and transmitted to EFAST). Failure to do so means you will have to start over on 1/1/18 as EFAST will not accept the filing after 12/31/17 and complete the 2017 forms for the 2017 short year/final filing

The 80/120 rule only applies for the transition from a small plan filer to a large plan files or from a large plan filer to a small plan filer. In other words, it is only referenced if you have a small plan that has increased participants at the beginning of the plan year to, say, 110 participants from 90 participants at the beginning of the prior year. This plan has the option to continue filing as a small plan, or to file as a large plan. If you have a plan that has 135 participants at the beginning of the previous plan year and filed as a large plan, and this year only has 110 participants at the BOY, it must still file as a large plan. The plan had over 100 lives and still has over 100 lives and, more importantly, it filed a Sch H in the prior year. A plan that has filed as a large plan may only change to the small plan status if the number of participants at the beginning of the plan year falls to under 100 lives. 100 Lives is still the dividing line between a large plan and a small plan. There is just wiggle room for small plans that go above 100 lives and for large plans that go below 100 lives.

At one time the EFAST people thought that only they would be able to determine the need for an amended filing. (Hence, the crossing in the mail issue.) It was not until a number of people had pointed out to them that, gee, they may have answered all of the questions in a manner to pass the edit checks, but still need to make a change in the filing that EFAST had a revelation. EFAST has changed the way they treat the amended forms in order to eliminate the confusion from prior years. So, that crossing issue should not happen in the future. To be on the safe side, however, I would include a letter explaining why the amended return is being filed; i.e., at EFAST request or at one's own volition

For a smaller plan, it is probably easier to do the Sch T and the 410(B) testing than to go thru the steps for the substantiation.