How does one go about determining whether an entity is a governmental instrumentality or agency? For example, several counties join together to create a nonprofit authority to oversee solid waste removal or establish a nonprofit rural transit authority. What should one look at to determine whether either of these authorities could sponsor a 401(k) or would be stuck using a governmental 401(a)-only plan?

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I am a 401k TPA. I have a client asking about setting up a cafeteria plan for medical expense and dependent care reimbursement. Do the employee contributions have to be in a segregated account and payments made from it?

I have a client who got a substantial package from them analyzing their plan unrequested. Has anyone seen this before? Is this just marketing? Just to be clear, I'm not suggesting there was anything inappropriate about it. My client was just surprised by the sheer size of it, and its customization to their plan (which appears to have been done based on 5500 data).

Is a fund change notice to participants required when the share class is being changed due to action by the fund's board of directors? Expenses will be lower.

The way I read the regs and all the guidance, including the IRS publications, and even Natalie Choate's book (which is wonderful, but I could not find where it addresses these questions), if a beneficiary rolls over the Roth 401(k) of a deceased participant to an inherited Roth IRA, and at death the participant did not meet the five-year rule, the following are the tax results. [1] The rollover is not taxable. [2] A new five-year holding period starts for the beneficiary's inherited IRA. [3] We don't worry about 59-1/2 because the distribution was on account of death. [4] The only way the beneficiary can avoid taxation on the earnings is to meet the 5-year holding rule. If the 5-year RMD rule applies to the inherited Roth IRA, then all earnings will be taxed, including pre-rollover and post-rollover. I read an article that suggested a non-spouse beneficiary cannot roll over a 401(k) Roth that is not a qualified distribution, but I don't think that's correct. Finally, if the beneficiary rolls over a Roth 401(k) that is qualified (because the participant had the Roth 401(k) for five years), the post-rollover earnings are still subject to a new 5-year holding period. This is all very confusing and the guidance seems unclear. Your thoughts?