pmacduff

Straight vanilla profit sharing plan - adoption agreement vesting section calls for "participant" to become fully vested upon death or total and permanent disability (no distinction for active or termed participants). Participant left Company in 2009 and was 40% vested in the ER PS portion of his account at that time. Has not yet taken distribution. Participant passes away. Beneficiary is entitled to 40% portion or does participant account vest 100% now that he is deceased?

I see your point Bird, but I do think this is an important issue and have many instances where safe harbor plans are probably never going to be making a disc. match or profit share contribution again. They have a proven track record to back that up of no match or ps in the last 5 or so years. It is illogical to me that those employers can't use forfeitures to help fund the safe harbor. Most of those forteitures will be used up anyway within a pretty short period of time. They are providing a guaranteed contribution to participants that is 100% vested, which in my mind can be a better benefit than the match or ps on a vesting schedule. Esp. in this day and age when many employees don't stay at the same place long enough to be vested. my 2 cents.

interesting. I'll do MORE digging and talk again to the CPA that was doing the partnership work.

Just found out (through some prodding & digging) that the EIN did NOT change; it was just a name change for the entity using the same EIN. So....now I believe the staff is ok continuing to contribute to the Plan.

not an excuse for the Sponsor but no one was notified until the last minute of how this was going to transpire. no amendment yet regarding the new name/entity. the new entity is not taking over the plan. my feeling was that the staff should not be making contributions to the Plan from their payroll under the new name/entity.

Dental practice with two dentist partnership and 401(k) safe harbor profit sharing plan. One dentist retires as of 09/30/2014 & receives a buyout from the practice. Plan will be terminating; I believe as of 12/31/2014. Younger Doc has renamed the practice effective 10/01/2014. Some staff members do make 401(k) contributions. Do those have to stop because the original partnership has ceased to exist? The staff people have remained on the same payroll with an entity name change.

I thought I recall seeing a post from Tom Poje with the "estimates" for 2015, but can't find it. I know it's only 10/06 - but anyone know when they might be out or can connect me to that recent post? Seemed like they came out alittle later last year (closer to Nov.1st). thanks in advance.

Can someone point me to the reg # regarding safe harbor plan amendments? (ie. what's allowable (not much I know) and what is not) We have a client currently doing the safe harbor match. They want to add auto enrollment to the plan in 2015 but with all the chaos at year-end, want to implement the auto enroll effective March 1st or so, instead of January 1st.

calling Tom Poje - just want to confirm my knowledge of the facts on SH and TH: If a plan has a more liberal eligibility for 401(k) deferrals (i.e. 6 mos of service) but makes the participants wait 1 year of service for the 3% non elective safe harbor contribution, then the plan in effect loses the top heavy "free ride"....is this accurate?

due to the issues last year whereby the 5558 was filed in July and then the 5500 form in early August: Some Sponsors received letters that the 5500 was late because of the timing of the IRS providing the 5558 information to the EBSA. what are others doing this year? Are you holding off on the 5500 filing and if so, until when? I know the issue is easily addressed with the proof of the 5558 filing date, but trying to avoid having the issue to begin with. any thoughts appreciated.

I'm certain this has an easy answer: I have a client who changed their name and the plan name in 2013 (effective 01/01/2013). EIN and all other data is the same (i.e. address, phone #, etc.) Can I go ahead and use the new names on the 5558 extension, since the 5500 will indicate the name change when eventually filed? I think it is ok because the filings are EIN driven, but then I got to "overthinking" and wasn't sure Thank you in advance.

We process per payroll investment splits for some of our "old fashioned" balance forward plans. The investment elections are loaded into Relius and all we do is import or enter the 401(k) deferrals and/or match for the weekly contributions and the system splits into the funds. ft wm didn't have that capablility and we would have had to go back to splitting them in Excel or some spreadsheet program and then importing to ft. (extra steps) Compensation is another issue. We have many quarterly and semi-annual plans for which we enter the period compensation and produce period valuations. At the end of the year Relius totals that for the annual compensation. On ft wm we would have to import the total annual compensation. A few of my large companies provide compensation on a monthly basis so that could get cumbersome. We have some plans with lots of divisions and multiple employer plans that require testing (i.e. ADP/ACP, top heavy, coverage, etc.) on the individual divisions. They were working on that and it may already be available. We test many of our "cross-tested" plans by breaking them into component plans to pass non discrim. testing and at the time we were looking ft wm wasn't able to do that. These are a few of the features we need and use frequently. ft. wm may have added some of these things, it was almost a year ago we were looking at them for admin software. Hope this is helpful. I would like to reiterate again that their customer service was awesome and response time was great!

I have to concur with what Chippy said re: the excellent customer service and working well on "basic" plans. also what Austin said about changing systems ("shudder to think"!). We were going to make the switch to ft and then found out that there were quite a few different/various things that we needed the system to do that it could not do at that time. Relius has more capabilities for our needs right now.

Thank you MoShawn...sometimes it just takes a "re" reading & I should have been more careful reading the SCP section. I was in the right place (failure to implement...) just read it wrong.

The dollar amounts are small. It doesn't change much either way but the participants get a bit more if I use the actual NHCE ADP per the pre-approved method as opposed to using the participants' individual percentages. Just trying to save the client $$ as it appears this was not their fault and the payroll company is not stepping up.

Participants became eligible as of 04/01/2013 and began 401(k) & roth contributions at that time. Employer changed payroll companies some time in May, 2013. New payroll vendor DID continue deductions for a few weeks and then abruptly stopped on four participants. (one actively enrolled and three auto enrollees) Fast forward to now. Employer discovers this issue (none of the 4 participants has noticed or brought this up to the Employer as of yet). So....a year has passed. The Employer must provide the 50% QNEC for these participants as well as the match (which is allocated and deposited annually at year end), yes? The participants have been receiving quarterly statements but I seem to recall as much as we might like to think the participants bear some responsibility after this amount of time, the onus is still on the Employer to properly correct. Also is it really the 50% QNEC - wouldn't I use the participants' actual contribution percentage since we know that? Additionally I believe the Employer needs to correct the 2014 year-to-date as well with the QNEC?

Austin, FWIW - I was directed during a webcast on 5500 forms to use the ID # that is used on the 1099-R forms. Since it's optional, most of our plans aren't completing it......

I had a similar situation and looked up in both the Pension Answer Book and Sal's books. Once the RMDs have begun, they cannot stop, regardless of change of ownership....

AHHH...there you go....told you I was old and tired! Because Son and Dad are coded with their actual ownership, I didn't put each's family info into the other because was thinking it was moot. Thanks for clearing that up for me BG5150

Yes - I did code family groups into the software. It then showed her with 100% under the family group (40% from son and 60% from husband), which brought my question to mind. I knew she was HCE and key, just curious about the 100% that the software showed for her. Thanks for the response.

ok - I KNOW this is very basic, but I'm old and tired.... Son owns 60% of Company Dad owns 40% of Company Mom works there as well. Does Mom have attribution from both husband and son for a total of 100%? It is not impacting anything with the Plan; just want to have them all coded correctly. Thanks in advance.

just another thought...the gateway can kick in if a participant is receiving a "non-elective" contribution & any matching contribution even safe harbor match is not a non-elective.

just as a side note - there is a spot on the 5500-SF for any commissions that were paid, if applicable.

BG5150 - I do have the eligibility set under each source individually in the account specs. I think what Tom has pointed out might be what happened in this particular case.

yes the AA is checked that after initial 12 month eligibility computation period from date of hire the measurement period switches from anniversary to the plan (calendar) year.