Allocating Plan Expenses

[chris]

E/er PSP allows for directed investment accounts. E/er wants to have each such account pay its own way as to accounting expenses. For example, one e/ee makes numerous trades daily and thus the annual accounting attributable to going through all of the trade history/data at year end is significant when compared to other participants. Generally, the plan provisions provide for the directed investment account to be segregated as to income, gain, loss, etc... as would be expected, but the E/er wants to also peg the administrative fees as well. Obviously, if we were talking about former participants, recent (sort of...) pronouncements by DOL and IRS would allow the plan to let the former participant accounts pay their own way; howeverm we are dealing with a current participant. Any suggestions appreciated.

[mming]

I believe that as long as the document allows for it and the SPD explicitly states so, charges incurred as a result of a participant's actions can be assessed directly to the individual, e.g., the way participants can be made to pay for loan fees. I would imagine that to be nondiscriminatory, a participant who even makes one trade may have to be dinged unless the doc/SPD establishes a threshold for a minimum number of transactions before charges are applied.