justanotheradmin

I usually explain it by building up with other examples. Abby is hired 12/17/2021, completed one year of service on 12/16/2022, enters 1/1/2023 Bobby is hired on 1/1/2022 has completed one year of service as of 12/31/2022. They enter 1/1/2023. Callie is hired 1/2/2022, has completed one year of service on 1/1/2022, they enter 1/1/2023 since it coincides. Danny has to be 5'2" to ride the coaster, then usually being exactly that height is good enough. They don't have to be more than that height. Emily finished the 8th grade and June 4th was her last day of school. She is done as of that day, she doesn't have to wait until the next day, or the next school year for that so be true.

I agree with Belgarath. Many pre-approved plan documents have sections where eligibility for full-time employees and part-time employees can be set separately. 520 hours in 3 months is very similar to saying full time employees need 3 months of service. Those same documents tend to have the fail-safe language that Belgarath mentions so that even if someone is not in after 3 months, they would satisfy eligibility with the maximum 1 year of service with 1,000 hours.

Thank you @C. B. Zeller this is what I was hoping for!

I used the Cornell website for many years as my preferred one, but with the cite formatting on the Bloomberg website I switched. But now it doesn't seem to make a difference so I may go back to Cornell as my go-to.

thank you @Peter Gulia I like the in-context tool that is helpful to learn! It only seems to be option on the ecfr website for regulations. Do you know of a website for the regular text of the code where that functionality exists? When I use the govinfo.gov website to navigate to the actual text of the code it takes me to the OLRC website which doesn't seem to have any similar functionality on it.

What websites do folks prefer to use when looking up actual text of code and regulations? Last year my preferred one became Bloomberg https://irc.bloombergtax.com/public/uscode/toc/irc Because it included the full cite on each line and I did not need to scroll up to figure out if it was (k)(9)(ii) or whatever. But that seems to have gone away. At least it doesn't display for me. Does anyone else use a free website that has that particular formatting? I really got used to having it.

Yes. The participants need to receive information about the change, typically a summary of material modifications letting them know there was a change to the plan's provisions.

I'm assuming you are talking about a 401(k) plan for a regular for-profit business. If it something else, special rules may apply. You should do a search on this board as well a general internet searches for "disguised service conditions, 401(k) class exclusion" or something similar. Also check the plan's legal document, as often the underlying document makes it clear that while different eligibility requirements can apply to part-time workers, they usually can't be structured in a way to hold them out of the plan completely. So might be your first issue. The second question is does a valid(yours probably isn't) class exclusion override the LTPT rules? I'll leave others to comment on that question, but my hunch is no they don't. If a doc says everyone at location A is excluded, I believe that exclusion applies to any possible LTPT workers from location A as well, but I'm sure others can provide better, or more certain insight into that question.

I have not seen any plans yet rely on electronic notary/ witness. I did attend an education session a few years ago that talked about the changes in various state laws (some enacted, some proposed) that allowed virtual electronic notarization and witnessing. It seems primarily something based on state law. With the arrival of the pandemic and lots of wills being updated the session was very relevant and timely. I wonder if plans can follow the state law rules for notarization with confidence or if they should stick to a possible more restrictive federal standard of some sort (if it exists).

For FWIW I see a lot of 'solo-k' plans with safe harbor in them, particularly SH to NHCE only. In the event an employee is hired and becomes eligible, the SH is already built into the plan document without a need for an amendment. Similarly - I don't like to see them with no service requirements/ immediate entry. A better design is the maximum 1 year of service, age 21, semi-annual entry etc so that if someone is hired who isn't the owner, there is time for an outside party to review the plan provisions before there are any errors, such as a missed opportunity to defer. If someone is hired that they want to let in sooner, usually its not a big deal to do an amendment to change that.

well box 5 is specifically Medicare Wages and Tips, which may or may not be the same as the plan document's definition as W-2 Compensation. You should double check the basic plan document for the actual definition of W-2 compensation, which might be different. For many documents W-2 comp really means anything that could be reported on a W-2, so its more often box 1, plus pre-tax amounts in Box 12, plus pre-tax amounts not reported on the W-2(such as §125 deferrals). I'm not sure what you mean by Gross Compensation either.

Reality has arrived - we are seeing plan audits reassigned due to personnel changes at Treasury, audit appointments pushed out, and even unofficially an audit scaled back. I'm sure there will be more changes coming.

Which part of SECURE 2.0 are you referring to here?

Just FYI - you don't need to put your question in more than one topic thread. Many regular readers and commentators view the most recent posts on the "Latest Messages" part of the website - which shows recent /active post across ALL topics. So posting in the QDRO thread and the 401(k) plan thread really isn't necessary and it is better to have responses consolidated under a single one. Maybe consider deleting this one?

I would like to point out that there absolutely is a 10% early withdrawal penalty to an alternate payee spouse if they are under age 59 1/2 and don't have some other exception. Being able to take a cash distribution payable to themselves pursuant to a benefit award in a DC plan QDRO does not change that.

In my two decades of working on primarily qualified DC plans (and a fair share of DB), I have NEVER had a participant in a regular qualified defined contribution plan elect an annuity. Thousands of plans, even more thousands of participants, not one. Most DC plans do not even allow annuity distributions, SECURE 1.0 and 2.0 does not override that. So I think your fear that a participant will elect an annuity from their DC (such as 401(k), 401(a), 403(b), money purchase etc), and then later a lump sum DRO is approved by the plan administrator as a QDRO - is unfounded. Keep in mind that the DRO is not Qualified until the plan says it is. Entering it into the court does not make it qualified. If the plan administrator receives a DRO that they cannot accept because the form of benefit or level of benefit is not available, perhaps because the participant already did something, the DRO will get rejected. Perhaps I misunderstood your concern, if so, I apologize. I hope others can chime in as well.

and yes, generally speaking, cafeteria plans are subject to non-discrimination testing under the myriad of control group rules and for small employers it isn't that unusual to see the HCE excluded from the cafeteria plan if testing has failed in the past. There are exceptions to everything off course, so whatever your particulars, you should have reviewed by someone who is well versed in control groups and combined testing for that particular benefit type (retirement plan, health, etc).

Given that this question was put in the Cafeteria Plans thread, I wonder if OP was looking for more basic answers, like health insurance plans, life insurance programs, disability insurance, qualified retirement plans, etc rather than understanding the actual mechanics of aggregation, disaggregation, 410(b), testing different parts separately (such as deferral, match, nonelective). The reality is that any benefit, bonus, compensation, depending on what it is, might be subject to the combined rules. There was a case (the cite escapes me ) where even year end grocery gift cards were considered an ERISA covered benefit. If you have a particular benefit any of the companies are offering - and want to know if it has to be analyzed with the rest of the control group - you are best off talking to someone who can review those particulars and specifics and give you an answer.

If the employer is paying the premiums on life insurance owned by the plan the premium payments are employer contributions to the plan. Having the premiums paid by the other dollars in the participant's account is no different from a participant investing in something with fees and the fees are taken from that person's account. Or a participant who is transferring dollars from investment A to investment B. Just because the participant wants more dollars in investment B doesn't mean the employer is going to put the dollars into investment B for the participant.

Post-nups are a thing, and should be a standard part of any family law attorney that prepares pre-nups. As would be updating beneficiary forms both before and after the marriage occurs. The soon-to-be spouse cannot waive a plan benefit they do not yet have rights to. They don't have rights under a qualified plan until they are actually married. The plan does not (cannot) look at any pre-nup. So once the spouse actually has rights under the plan - that's when they can sign a waiver of the benefit on an updated beneficiary designation.

Did the TPA use actual rate of return, rather than the DOL calculator? Unless the TPA was told that the plan would be submitting the correction to VFCP, the calculator should not be (though it often is) used. I'm also wondering why the same person or company isn't doing the lost earnings + Form 5330 + VFCP if the plan wanted all three. It seems unusual or inefficient to have someone different prepare just the VFCP submission.

agreed. I dislike that the guidance uses the term "allocated" because like you, I use it to refer to the year to which is accrued, which is not always the same as the year in which it is actually deposited. So when reading and discussing with others I try to remember to point out that the usage of "allocated" in this guidance is not the same as what I use with my close peers in the industry. So I agree, when the dollars are deposited - that is when the taxable event occurs.

If there are fees that are going to be paid from the plan assets, for the QTA, recordkeeper, custodian, auditor, advisor, TPA etc typically all of those should be addressed first, before payouts occur. In bankruptcy - if the plan accounts are to cover the fees - as most plan allow - then you don't want the people who took their time taking their distributions to bear a disproportionate portion of the remaining fees.

Only speaking to the question about Sole prop and EIN (not addressing any of your filing or business entity issues). Sole proprietors can, and do, get EINs all the time. They are available through the exact same process online as with any other business that needs an EIN, on the IRS website. they might need them for retirement plan purposes, such as here. Or because they have employees and will be doing payroll and remitting payroll taxes and issuing W-2s, etc lots of different reasons why having an EIN might be needed for a sole prop.

well how much are you actually doing? sending them a link to the DFVCP page and telling them how to answer the questions? and then telling them to click okay and follow the instructions to make the online payment? Seems like that's just an email, or maybe a phone call if they like someone to be with them while they click on things. Assuming you are charging for preparing the 5500s themselves, and marking the DFVCP forms, I don't see how it would be much more. If you charge by the hour for extra assistance items, maybe one hour?