Filing 8955 SSA on FIRE system

[Jim Chad]

I just talked to Relius support and they said the IRS has the testing part of the FIRE system turned off until November. so they are planning on releasing the version we want in January 2012. It will be the 2012 form 8955 SSA.

[chc93]

Did Relius mention a 2010 and/or 2011 form? Or, is the 2012 form the "next" form after the 2009 form. If so, how or when do we do the 2011 form, seeing that the 2010 "form" is done on the 2009 form. This is getting confusing. Anyone with info or ideas?

[pmacduff]

I found this on the IRS website. Not much help to answer your questions, but I see at the top of page #3 that they refer to the 2011 8955 SSA form on a calendar year plan would be due to be filed by July 31, 2012 without extension.

So...in my opinion they will be producing a 2011 form. Whether or not they bother to do a 2010 form (because it could be filed on the 2009 form) is another question.

I've noticed in the past that Relius refers to the software releases by the release year (for example, their software for the 2010 5500 forms is actually called the 2011 version) instead of the form year.

Meaning IMHO, if Relius refers to a release in January of 2012 that will be the 2011 8955 SSA forms.

IRS_a_11_21_SSA.pdf

[chc93]

pmacduff, thank you very much for the information.

[chc93]

I just read in Sungard/Relius that the IRS released the draft of the 2010 Form 8955-SSA. The kicker is that once the IRS releases the final 2010 form, the transition rules which allows use of the 2009 form to report 2010 information will not be available. And the deadline for the 2010 form is still Jan 17, 2012. Since we already started preparing the 2010 information on the 2009 form, we'll be filing that very soon now, or else we'll have to re-do the 2010 information on the 2010 form... and who knows when that will be.

[Tom Poje]

we filed the 2009 awhile ago (which includes 2009 and 2010) data with batch through ft william and that has been accepted.

just filed a second batch consisting of 2010 only today. seems to take a few days to process everything.

[pmacduff]

most of our filings are pretty small but we have had success with both 2009 and 2010 filings going well. It hasn't taken longer than 3 business days to receive confirmation from the FIRE site and I've gotten a "good" filing status on all.

[chc93]

Thanks for the comments. We've done a couple of our larger plans through FIRE with both 2009 and 2010 information without problems. Our smaller plans are being done now. My concern is that the IRS issues the final 2010 form before we can finish what we're doing. Option is to wait for the final 2010 form, but again, who knows when that will be and how much time we'll have before the deadline. I expect to file in a week or two, and really hope the IRS doesn't pull a "fast" one this time and issue the final 2010 form quickly.