"Plan eligibility for 401k and match is at hire. Plan will match 100% of the first 6% of 401k. Plan wants to set up traditional auto enrollment at 3%. No safe harbors in this plan. Does that sound funny?"

"One-owner corporation sponsors calendar year 401(k) non-safe harbor plan. No employees until 2018, one employee becomes eligible for plan in 2019, owner neglects to provide the opportunity to participate. Owner has not contributed to the plan yet in 2019. Obviously the plan is top heavy. Assume first that the owner will not participate in 2019. How do I determine the missed deferral opportunity if there were no NHCE deferrals in the past? Can I use 3% (similar to the rate used in the first year of a plan using prior year testing)? If so, is the QNEC 50% of the 3%? Let's assume next that the owner does want to participate, and let's assume the owner wants to defer 10% of their compensation. Is the QNEC now 4% (that is, 50% of the 8% needed to pass ADP)? If any of that is actually correct, does all of the missed deferral correction amount count towards top heavy, or must the top heavy minimum be contributed in addition to the correction amount?"

"Our new client is an S corp. with put option. We discussed the NUA treatment with the client -- i.e., whether or not this has been applied to past distributions. Received very vague and incomplete information, so we're skeptical as to whether this was correctly applied. Seems to me that this treatment would have been applied across the board to all particpants to whom it was applicable since plan inception (or post Rev. Proc. 2003-23) to avoid nondiscrimination. Any thoughts?"

"Can an employer offer an 'opt out' incentive for employees who decline coverage (only if enrolled the previous year) and not offer any incentive to employees who have never participated in the plan? The former saves huge money and only makes sense, but is not offered to me."

"I am new to working for multiemployer pension funds. I see a number of these plans are money purchase plans and they have a concept of deemed termination of employment, in which no contributing employer makes a contribution for an employee (for say, 6 or 12 months), then the employee is deemed to have terminated his/her employment and is entitled to commence distribution of his/her account balance. In the context of a money purchase plan, the IRS treats them as a pension plan and they require that the employee have a severance from employment. Thus, as applied to those types of provisions, the plan risks disqualification because there is no determination of whether the participant must have an actual severance from employment. Is the IRS view on these deemed termination of employment provisions less restrictive in the collective bargaining context or should the deemed termination of employment provision in a money purchase plan be read as also requiring an actual severance from employment? Does anyone have any legal authority to cite either way for such a proposition?"