"Where does it say that a participant must pay off a defaulted loan before they can take a new one? What if it was offset after a distributable event? (Plan allows only one loan at a time)"

"As of 12/31/22, individual taxpayer has no IRA accounts. AGI around $1,000,000, which is expected to be the same in 2023. In January, 2023, individual makes a 2023 non-deductible IRA contribution of $7,500 (over age 50), and immediately converts it to a Roth. In September, 2023, individual rolls over a prior retirement plan balance into a Traditional IRA. Question: Would the entire Roth conversion of $7,500 be considered non-taxable, or would the individual have to consider the rollover traditional IRA to determine if a portion of the conversion, for earnings, is taxable."

"The US DOL is auditing one employer that is participating in a PEP. The DOL has requested a copy of the trust agreement for 2022, which provides disbursement information for all participants in all the participating employers in the PEP. The DOL refuses a consolidated/summary version and wishes to see all approx. 4000 pages. Is information on distributions to participants not employed by the company being audited private? Should any redaction be made?"

"Letter comes in from IRS. $150K penalty. My advice has always been: [1] Amend 5500 to check DFVC box [2] Do a DFVC filing and pay the user fee [3] Write the IRS and ask them to abate because you fully complied with DFVC. Is that what people are still doing?"

"One of my clients is of the belief that they can only designate a spouse as the beneficiary of their Cash Balance Plan. I think I know the answer, but I just wanted to make sure. Someone can name a non-spouse their beneficiary, correct? The only caveat being that if they are married, they need to get spousal consent to elect someone else to be their beneficiary."

"Our client maintains a DB plan. A participant was receiving a J&S payment and then died. The plan sponsor tried reaching out to the (non-spouse) beneficiary for years and never received a response. Now the beneficiary has died. Presumably the missed payments are still owed to the beneficiary's estate. However, is the sponsor required to include an interest adjustment where they made every effort to pay during the beneficiary's lifetime?"

"Is there an election change event that would allow the employee who enrolled in VA benefits to drop employer coverage mid-year?"

"Two questions relative to non-governmental 457(b) Plans. As ... [1] Two clients have all of the 457(b) assets in brokerage accounts that in the name of plan and FBO the participant. There are 4 or 5 participants. This seems to completely negate the requirement that these plans be 'unfunded'. There is a rabbi trust, but that does not change the fact that these should not be SDBAs in the participant name, correct? [2] A participant took a distribution earlier this year after terminating employment. The timing was in accordance with the document. The employer understands that they need to have the distribution reported on the 2023 W-2. That participant took the entire account balance as a cash distribution and had no taxes withheld. Since payroll taxes apply, I take it this is wrong, but how can we fix? Do we have the client run the distribution of deferred compensation through payroll to determine how much in taxes is due and ask for the money back from the participant? It seems like it would be cleaner to never have a distribution paid directly from an account to a participant and have the account balance instead paid to the employer (since it company assets until paid anyway) and then have them run through payroll and issue the distribution in the same manner as a paycheck (aside from applying FICA if already withheld). Is that what you all are doing?"