"The [IRS] has had six people lead the agency this year. Now, Billy Long is out as IRS commissioner, with the Secretary of the Treasury serving as acting commissioner. The deputy commissioner position is vacant. The chief of staff role is vacant. More than half the officer positions are vacant or '(acting)'. What do we imagine about the pace of new examinations in 2025?"

"Recently I was lucky enough to receive the PenChecks NIPA scholarship to go for either a AKS or APA designation. I don't currently have any official designations so it's a very exciting thing. I know NIPA and ASPPA both do similar things but in different ways. My firm has never really invested in continuing education but I've convinced by boss to invest in it as I really would like to start getting official recognition. That said, memberships to ASPPA and NIPA are expensive and required to keep a certification, and I'd hate to end up in a sunk cost fallacy sticking with NIPA if ASPPA might be more useful. A couple questions:

• I know NIPA offers a kind of equivalency system for designations from some other institutions (for example, ERPA qualifies you for AKS 1, 2, APA 1-4). Does ASPPA have anything like this where a AKS or APA designation would be able to be converted to an ASPPA designation in the case we chose to switch?
• What's the cost difference look like between being a NIPA member and obtaining CE credits each year for their qualifications vs at ASPPA? We're a relatively small firm and it'd be at least somewhat of a consideration.

Any insights would be very helpful, thank you."

"A lot of participation agreements include a space for you to enter the merger effective date of a participating employer's plan (e.g. in the event of the acquisition of another entity's stock and the merger of their plan into the main plan). The challenge that is always there is we don't necessarily know exactly when the assets are moving (at least not in time to execute relevant documents). My preference has always been to have the merger effective date be coincident with the transfer of assets to simplify reporting and to not commingle the plans with 2 recordkeepers. Would an effective date of 'Coincident with the transfer of assets from the trustee or custodian of the ABC 401(k) Plan, which is expected to take place on or about September 15, 2025.' be sufficient?"

"In the past, a terminated participant with a vested benefit payable from a pension plan had to be provided with annuity options (actually, the normal form of benefit) if the lump sum value of their benefit exceeded $5,000. In other words, terminees with a vested lump sum value of less than $5,000 could simply be paid a cash lump sum. Did this threshold go up to $7,000 with the SECURE Act? If so, then I would think a terminee with a vested lump sum value of less than $7,000 could just be paid a cash lump sum for plan years beginning in 2025. Does anyone disagree with this?"

"Just curious if this sounds correct. If we have a plan with auto-enrollment, we are using our 'normal' enrollment forms, normal meaning no auto-enroll language on them. The individual elects to participate or not. If the plan sponsor has a newly eligible employee complete this form (yes/no) for enrollment, the auto-enrollment is really a non-issue, correct? It seems simple to me: We have the auto-enroll language in the document and SPD, but if we have a clear yes/no from the participant on the form whether they want to participate or not, auto-enrollment is avoided altogether. Are we missing anything here?"