cme685

i meant to say (major) online brokerage not broker (no one in this decade should be using a human broker) ...fee-free self-employed 401(k) plans... 3 partners, only 2 have retirement plans cause the other uses retirement from w-2 job ... it's 2 different plans cause they were opened (less than 12) months apart but at the same brokerage.....cause one partner wanted to open plan and contribute in December and was allowed an early start. and each plan only mentions the partner it is designed for in the paperwork (only share EIN) and to the poster "bird", no the employer contributions do vary --- they are not identical ... i see no rule anywhere they must be identical ... everything to some degree evens out in the uneven ownership % of the partnership for capital gains/interest that flow through as well as the differing $ amts in guaranteed payments to partners. (in this case, the partner who doesnt get the partnership retirements contributions is the majority % owner but also receives zero guaranteed payments to partners) now that I've explained further, i'm not sure if anything is still problematic about this setup cause it's just a family gen partnership with a unique partner-split not a partnership of business associates or larger... again, my previous post (after some understanding about the forms) was just to verify that when I fill out the sf-5500 as a one-participant, I put a value both in the employers (up to 36.5k) and the participants (up to 18.5k) box and I'm filling it out for plans 001 and 002 individually not collectively.

well i answered 1A as "a one-participant plan" it's a 3 family member general partnership but only two have self-employed 401(k) accounts ... the plans were opened separately at the same broker (less a year apart but 2 diff calendar years), they fall under same EIN and I will receive both separate and a combined form 5500 AVS-Annual Valuation Statements (i did for 2017), so I THOUGHT I could file them together from the instructions and therefore as there is slightly more than 250k combined as of year-end 2018 (individually each is less than 250k threshold), im now required to file and i guess i'll do so electronically with efast2 but it seems i was wrong now i checked my records for the account opening pdfs en these 401(k) accounts and discovered I did a plan 001 starting jan 1 2015 for one partner and a plan 002 starting jan 1 2016 for the other partner both had the same legal name, is that okay? .... just ID different? and administrator different (each partner administrator of own account) so now i need to file two separate one-participant sf-5500s for 2018 - right? additionally according to you, im going to put 18500 for 8a(2)participants and the rest of 2018 contributions (20ish %) as 8a(1) employers ... and you separate employer and participant contributions (even though you didnt select "a single-employer plan") and there is nothing i file with the IRS that shows the $250k+, aka the combination of plans 001 and plan 002?

for a "one-participant" (2 sibling partners in gen. partnership w/ 2 self-employed 401ks under partnership EIN) for question 8a on 5500-sf, is employee contribution of up to $18500 per person (in 2018) to 401k go to 8a(2) participants and the 20-25% go to employee amount go to 8a(1) employers....or does IRS want "one-participant" plans to lump all 401k (employer & employee) contributions to 8a(2) participants because it is not a "single employer plan" tia