Partic asked for Roth, got Pre-tax. 3 years

Participant asked for deferrals to be taken as Roth, but it was done as pre-tax.  Started May 2023 through last week when they left.

What is the remedy for that?  In plan Roth rollover?

The thing that gets me is it was the participant who was in charge of entering the deferrals into the payroll system.

403(b) plan, but that shouldn't matter, I think.

I have a vague recollection of a similar question in the past.  Maybe you could try the Search feature above.  Probably search this forum with a search term of "Roth"?

Amazing how little some people pay attention.  The snark in me wants tos ay the remedy (for stupidity) is termination, but, I'll refrain.  We have on every statement, every confirm, the landing page for web access and other places a statement that after TWO notifications of something, it is presumed ratified by the participant.  At most, two bites would be the second statement post the action, but generally the first bite is the confirm, and the second would be the next quarterly statement.  Never had to defend that, and I'm not sure I want to, but it has caused some people, including lawyers, to back-off of a claim (lest they be embarrassed by lack of attention they had in a "participant directed" plan.)

Some lawyers like provisions by which nonobjection to an account statement or confirmation accepts or ratifies what it reports. Especially when the plan’s governing documents support those provisions.

21 hours ago, MoJo said:

Amazing how little some people pay attention.  The snark in me wants tos ay the remedy (for stupidity) is termination, but, I'll refrain.

Was thinking the same thing - or as Forest Gump's mother told him, "stupid is as stupid does." That anyone, for YEARS, doesn't notice something like that is amazing, let alone someone who was involved in the payroll process. But we constantly see these situations pop up in this forum where someone's election, that directly affects their paycheck, gets discovered after a ridiculous amount of time - it flabbergasts me every time. So I'll hold more venting until the next example hits this forum, peace out.

To correct the error, the deferrals should be transferred, adjusted for earnings, from the pre-tax account to the Roth account. We have done this by issuing a corrected Form W-2 for the year of error.  The downside to this was that the employee then had to file an amended Form 1040 for that year.  We also saw that the IRS website (Fixing common mistakes - Correcting a Roth contribution failure | Internal Revenue Service) states that the employer can include the amount transferred from the pre-tax to the Roth account in the former employee's compensation in the year of transfer, which might be easier for you since this is a multiple year issue.  We didn't do that because we weren't sure what would happen with the required withholding and we were only dealing with one year.   Note that only federal income tax withholding is at issue because FICA etc. should have been previously applied.  

An in-plan rollover to a Roth account is the simplest solution.