"We administer a 401K that allows for employee after tax contriiubtions. The client over-shot 415 by $18K. Since voluntary, will remove from the plan, but be taxed on the earnings. In the past, we have used the VFCP calculator to calculate interest from the date of payment to the plan through the date the funds are removed from the plan. Is this still allowed; or if not, what is the generally accepted method?"

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"I have a non spouse beneficiary. did not start taking payments so he is on the 5 year clock to have the monies out. No response and cannot verify a good address since it has to be out of the plan in 5 years, can it be forced to an IRA? or, can it be forced to the state unclaimed funds? cannot find any real guidance on this situation"

"I have an issue that just arose, I was notified by my previous employer plan sponsor that I was overpaid when I left my 401k. I was overpaid roughly $6000 due to an error by the plan administrator back in 2016. I have since rolled those funds into my own personal IRA and now Vanguard is requesting I give those funds back. I dont feel that I am obligated to return those funds as I was not the one who made the mistake and in most lines of work you are held accountable for mistakes and not allowed to pass them off to someone else. Additionally I dont feel I should have to pull those funds from my IRA which would be an early distribution (additional tax consequence) and I would then need to amend my tax return from 2016 which is time and resources spent when that would not be necessary had this error not occurred. I am curious if anyone has insight into what my rights and options are? I can obviously not respond but dont want to have a law suit on my hands and dont want to have this issue come up in 20 years when they claim some crazy thing like I now owe them $50,000 because of inflation and interest."

"Parent Company 1 owns 100% of Company A which has a standard 401k plan with no match or SH at platform X (200 employees). Parent Company 1 purchases 100% of Company B which has its own 401k plan with a match and safe-harbor at platform Z (with 20 employees). I understand there is a period of transitional relief. In what circumstances could each plan operate individually on their own platforms without any combined testing or BRF issues? Is there something about "separate lines of business"?"

"Discovered Solo K excluding nonowners had statutory employees during 2018. We are now past October 15th 11(g) amendment deadline. Does latest EPCRS Rev Proc regarding self correcting retroactive discretionary amendments help us without having to go through VCP?"

"Is it correct that if a participant takes a plan loan from their pre-tax 401k deferral account that they are essentially double taxed when they make the payments back on an after tax basis. Taxed once when the deferral is made and then taxed again when they take a distribution from the plan? I'm trying to figure out how it would be a good idea to take a plan loan if the taxation on the money is detrimental to the employee?"

"I was entitled to half of my ex's 401K and IRA's, including a REIT. The REIT was moved into my account pursuant to a QDRO, along with another REIT. I learned in August that one of the REIT's disappeared from my account and is now in my ex's account. The financial advisor has been allegedly working to move it back into my name where it belongs, but it has taken months and has not gotten anywhere, along with no explanation on how this happened in the first place. I am ready to file a complaint with the appropriate agency to move this along. Any thoughts on how this happened or how I can resolve it?"

"Hi to All, This question is about what to report on the 5500 or 5500-SF as a client's bond coverage, depending upon the date one chooses. I can find plenty of references that say that a bond coverage amount for purchasing purposes should be determined near the beginning of the year and should be based on the greatest amount of funds handled in the previous year. What I can't find is a reference stating that the bond amount reported on the 5500 should be the amount in force.......as of when? The first day of the plan year? The last day of the plan year? The reason it came up is that a plan had no bond in its first year of operations, calendar 2017. The employer purchased an adequate bond on 02/01/2018, and renewed that bond on 02/01/2019. The plan is subject to having an independent audit due to having over 100 participants. The employer bought a Colonial Surety retroactive bond for the minimum amount possible ($10,000) to cover 2017. Colonial will not sell a retroactive bond without having the subsequent years as well, so the employer paid for a total of 4 individual one year periods of coverage that run 11/01/2016-10/31/2017, 11/01/2017-10/31/2018, 11/30/2018-10/31/2019, and 11/01/2019-10/31/2020. The auditor is advising the client that he needs to decide whether or not to purchase more coverage for 2018 because of the one month, January 2018, for which he (now) has a $10,000 bond. He actually needed a $150,000 bond on exactly 01/01/2018 and he bought one, from a different company, on 02/01/2018, but the auditor's position is that this is still not sufficient. The auditor says that one might just let it go and not worry about it, were it nor for the fact that the plan is filing late which already draws attention to itself and reporting an inadequate bond amount would be just one more red flag. That led to another question, one of general procedure. We typically report on the 5500 the amount of coverage in force as of the end of the plan year, even though the amount is determined based on assets as of the first of the plan year. During the year, our clients will increase their bond coverages if we have advised them to do so based on the prior year's annual report. For example: A client has a $20,000 bond for all of 2018. We produce the annual report for 2018 sometime between 01/07/2019 and 09/14/2019. At that time, we advise the client that based on their assets at the end of 2018, they need to increase the coverage in 2019 from $20,000 to $30,000. The client dutifully complies and by 12/31/2019, the client has a $30,000 bond. When it's time to prepare the 2019 5500-SF, do we report $20,000 as the bond amount because that's what they had on 01/01/2019, or do we report $30,000, because that's what they had by 12/31/2019? Every place I have worked so far, we would report the $30,000 figure. So the questions are: 1. Does this client really need to go to the extra expense to increase the Colonial 2018 bond for that one month (January) that they were out of compliance and 2. When doing the 2018 5500, do we report the amount of coverage they actually had as of 01/01/2018 ($10,000) or the amount of coverage they had in force as of 12/31/2018 ($160,000)? Thank you as always for your ideas."

"One of my plan sponsors had another company in their plan and they sold that company in June and it spun off into their own plan for 2019. The plan is failing the 410b testing for ERPS due to those individuals. Do I really have to include those people who were with the employer that was sold off? Tell me there is a special rule that those employees don't count?"

"Anyone know?"