Kirk Maldonado

You might want to look at IRS Publication 502, which is available on the IRS' website.

Similar to what MJB provided, Code Section 457(g)(1) states: A plan maintained by [governmental entity] shall not be treated as an eligible deferred compensation plan unless all assets and income of the plan described in subsection (b)(6) are held in trust for the exclusive benefit of participants and their beneficiaries.

I've had several plans with multiple participants.

Is there an Income in Respect of a Decedent issue here?

#17 - Love Story

MissChele: You'll be more likely to get responses if you explain your question a bit more. Specifically, you should tell people what you mean by ""concierge MD membership."

pcohen: When you say "for 2006," do you mean the one that is filed in 2006 or the one that relates to the 2006 plan year?

I disagree completely with the proposition that larger vendors provide better service at lower costs. My experience has been that they provide a lower quality of service. I've seen this phenomenon for over 20 years.

SoCalActuary: Does the subpoena relate to the preparation of a QDRO? If it does, I seem to recall that the DOL has given some guidance on this point.

MarZDoates: There is one problem associated with doing that. Because the funds will not be dissipated by the end of the plan year in which the self-insured arrangement is terminated, you will have to file a Form 5500 for the next plan year, even if you would have been exempted from filing one because you are a small plan that is fully insured. Of course, this is irrelevant if you have to file a Form 5500 for the next plan year anyway. (Plans that are small enough to be exempt from the Form 5500 filing requirement shouldn't be in self-funded plans anyway, but I've had two clients over the years that were self-funded even though they had well under 100 participants.)

Have you looked at ERISA section 408(e)?

I think that DOL Ad. Op. 78-25A provides some useful guidance.

chloe: Have you tried using the search function in BenefitsLink? I seem to recall that there was an article right on point in the past month in Benefits in the News.

Green92: I would make your statement even more broadly. I don't think most participants or plan sponsors are interested in hearing about 95% of the topics discussed on the Message Boards.

mjb: I thought that the IRS officially frowned on trying to correct operational errors by retroactive amendments.

If my memory serves me right, standardized plans require coverage of all members of the controlled group. Thus, the employees of Company B should have been covered by the plan sponsored by Company A, even if Company B never adopted the plan of Company A and even if the benefit under Company B's plan is more generous. This assumes, of course, that you are dealing with a standardized plan or some other type of plan that mandates coverage of all members of the controlled group.

You should also check with the National Center for Employee Ownership (located in Oakland, California) and The ESOP Association (located in Washington, D.C.) to see what they have to offer. The NCEO often offers publications for almost a nominal fee if you are a member, and the cost to join is quite reasonable. The savings of purchasing one book will often pay for the cost of joining.

The regulations expressly deal with the issue of switching methods of crediting service.

I would make a small change to MWeddell's wording, which I think is what was meant: most practitioners believe the best practice is to not take deferrals from compensation paid after [the paycheck covering] an employee's last hour of service. Thus, the "severance" pay need not be made on the employee's last day of employment, if it is paid to him or her no later than the date on which he or she receives the last paycheck.

Although this ages me considerably, I have seen many section 401(k) plans with GICs. However, I've not seen one for probably 15 or 20 years. They were the preferred investment vehicle for a while. I remember reading statistics that then that showed that something like 2/3rds or 3/4ths of all section 401(k) contributions were being invested in GICs.

There was a TPA in San Diego that reportedly went to jail for backdating documents. If you want to do that you should retain competent ERISA counsel to advise you and possibly a criminal defense attorney. My guess is that they will tell you not to do that. Posting a message in a public forum that you are considering backdating documents probably isn't the wisest thing to do.

Why don't either (or both) of you submit a comment to the IRS on this point? Because they've indicated that the final regs won't be out until next fall, there's a good likelihood that they would be receptive to addressing this issue even though the deadline for submitting comments is passed.

mjb: I've always wondered (by never researched) whether the employer could pay the tax on behalf of the plan. Of course, I assume that the payment would be treated as a contribution to the plan unless the payment was made to rectify a breach of fiduciary responsibility. That might occur, for example, in an extreme example where the fiduciaries wouldn't have made the investment if they knew it would be subject to UBTI. Do you have further thoughts on this issue?

I believe that this has been discussed before. Try using the "search" function.

You need to look into whether providing that benefit might affect the hospital's tax-exempt status.