Larry Starr

Unless you have a badly written document, there almost certainly is a provision in it that allows the trustees to do valuations on other dates at their discretion. Our plans are mostly annual valued / end of year plans, but when distributions are made that are either LARGE dollar amounts, or a large percentage of the plan assets AND there has been a "significant"change in the underlying values due to market changes, we generally recommend an interim valuation be done. And no, doing an interim val at some point does NOT set a precedent that then requires that interim vals be done all the time.

You got the right answers above. However, you can solve your problem of the new doc being eligible by still excluding all non-owner docs EXCEPT this one (by name). Then, all new non-owner docs continue to be excluded and they only need to amend if there is one that they want to allow in. If they expect that it will be unusual to allow any other docs in, then this works with no additional amendments. FWIW. BTW, we exclude or limit max allocations to HCEs by name ALL THE TIME.

Your spinning off the "plan" of company A from the controlled group; there is no reason why it can't remain 6/1 - 5/30 and the effective date of the spin off be 6/1/18 and full year comp applied for the 12 months ending 5/30/19.

Yup. No problem. Notice 2016-16 Permits… Mid-year amendments to plan provisions that do not impact the content of the safe harbor notice;

And you really can run it on your admin system as one plan with two divisions; it isn't difficult. Just a couple of things you have to watch out for (already noted one previously re: forfeitures). Of course, TWO 5500s.

OOPS! That last line should be ".... so we use a volume submitted WITHOUT an AA".

You can do that, but to quote our 37th president: "that would be wrong"! :-)

Austin, glad you are finally a believer. Ratherbegolfing has it exactly correct; you cannot sponsor a MEP (at least, not under these rules; we will see what may eventually come down the pike).

Every one of our plans MATCHES the fiscal year of the sponsor; and when all those fiscal years changed to calendar years a number of years ago, we changed every plan to match. ADP makes every plan be calendar year (just one of the many things wrong with them) because that's all they know how to handle. As to someone being adamant, YOU don't have to prove anything. As someone else mentioned, my response to them is "please give me the cite that says that". They can't; it doesn't exist. And being "adamant" about something you don't know is the same as being an idiot and a bad advisor. Saying "I believe it's this way" is very different. Strong opinion to follow..... :-)

We discourage loans by having NO LOANS in the plan. I'd say over 95% of our plans do not allow loans. Want to borrow money: go to the bank! My employers don't want to be in the banking business with their employees.

Rarely have a maybe plan because almost all of our plans are top heavy. But, I don't think you can CHANGE anything for 2018; the notice is that you will (or will not) do what you originally said the provision was; it's do it or not do it. If HCEs deferred knowing there MIGHT be a 3% contribution and then you do the 3% but say "Wait, not for you guys!", I think you have a problem. Make the change for 2019.

Sure; we both can craft a situation where the notification to the employees COULD be useful, but I think in business terminations, those would be few. FWIW.

I'd go a little further out on that limb..... NO.

We use prime plus 1; no IRS agent will ever challenge that because it is much too complicated an issue and subjective; they would have enormous difficulty justifying any time spent on that issue to their superiors. That is the practical side of it. As to pay back themselves, no they are not. They are paying back the plan. If it is pooled accounts (as many of our plans are), they are simply producing an asset that is earning (in this example) 6.25% for everyone in the plan. Whether that is good or bad depends on what they are losing/gaining vs the other assets in the plan. If the plan return was 8%, they are losing money and would be better borrowing from the bank. If the plan return was 4%, then the higher rate of return is a positive in their account. If it's a directed account, the same is true except that the numbers apply to their account only. But "paying back themselves" is a completely misleading "advantage" and should be dropped from any discussion of loan positives/negatives. Rate of return is the real issue vs opportunity costs.

Utter nonsense!

I'm sorry, but I think this is easy. It is clearly UNRELATED. The reg (1.416-1 T-32 ) clearly contemplates the transfer of assets that belonged to the benefit of the one making the transfer or on whose behalf the transfer is made. In this case, that person is dead; the spouse does not step into those shoes. Any other reading is tortured.

It was Guam; we had several emails to discuss options.

And remember to define it as last names at time of first eligibility to avoid people moving when there are last name changes as in marriages/divorces. PS: We don't use adoption agreements. We customize all plan documents so we use a volume submitter with an AA.

I would ordinarily suggest the same as just good employee relations, but in this case the employees were all terminated and went to work for the new practice so having the old practice send them a note that they are not making any more contributions to their SIMPLE is just superfluous I would suggest.

Your question has a basis that makes no sense to most of us. You never have just two choices to provide a 401(k). I think your understanding of how this all works is probably in need of some additional education. Financial firms provide INVESTMENTS, and you have hundreds of choices of investment firms. The plan design/documents can be provided by consulting/administration firms (like mine) that actually helps you set up the plan and then you can go anywhere you want for the investments. I suggest you might want to find an administrative firm that you can discuss this with. If you wish, send me your information to larrystarr@qpc-inc.com and I will try to help you find a firm in your area that you can at least speak with. You certainly do not have just TWO choices. As to your specific questions, those are, frankly, trivial issues. SEC registration does not give you any real benefit. If a firm is required to be registered and isn't, then that's a problem, but that's not what you describe here. If the other firm is a trust company, they are regulated but under different authorities.

Might help to NOT use abbreviations that some of us might not understand. What is DOP? Also, what is a "compensation" payment to a 409A plan? I think that needs better explanation as well.

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Agreed: 1) No notice is required to employees (they know the old employer is gone). 2) No notice to custodian (they couldn't care less and wouldn't do anything with a "notice" anyway). 3) New employer adopts his own Simple (of course, I refer to them as "STUPIDS" which is what they referred to in Congress when they were proposed!) but the employees can use the same IRAs as funding if they want. 4) The existing accounts just keep going on their merry way until the owner decides she wants to put her money someplace else.

Thanks for posting. As you now propose it, since Company A was NOT the plan sponsor but a participating employer, any new plan set up by Company A as the plan sponsor would be their first plan as sponsor under their EIN and therefore would be 001.

Yes, as those employees switch to the sponsor's payroll and become their employees, if you want to give credit for prior service, amend the plan to add the prior employer. It's a simple one page amendment and SMM.