On August 6 President Donald Trump signed a series of executive orders that expanded economic relief to taxpayers. One of those orders calls for employee payroll tax deferrals from September 1 through December 31, 2020. It includes the 6.2% of the employee’s share of Social Security taxes but not the 1.45% employee’s share of Medicare taxes; and it is applicable for employees with biweekly pre-tax income of less than $4,000. In the absence of any…

The deadline to restate preapproved defined benefit pension plans or 403(b) plans for the Pension Protection Act (“PPA”) has come and gone. July 31, 2020 was the date the IRS required that these plans be updated to reflect changes since the PPA was passed in 2016. The PPA restatement is not optional. Failure to do so by the deadline is a plan disqualification issue that could adverse tax consequences for plan sponsors and participants. However,…

That plan would be a SEP, the acronym for Simplified Employee Pension, an IRA-based retirement plan. Unlike a “qualified” retirement plan (401[k}, profit-sharing, or defined benefit) which must be in place no later than the last day of the year, a SEP is subject to a different rule. Generally, a SEP can be set as late as the due date (including extensions) of the taxpayer’s income tax return for the tax year. That means he…

This is what we have been waiting for. In our earlier post, we reported that the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) extended various deadlines for retirement plan filing and payment obligations. At the time of that publication, the Department of Labor (DOL) had not provided relief for ERISA filings. On April 28, 2020, the DOL provided guidance issuing three publications that addressed the impact of COVID-19 on ERISA reporting and disclosures responsibilities. For now, we’ll…

Grappling with COVIT-19 issues has certainly been difficult, but retirement plan filings and payments are still required. The Internal Revenue Service has provided relief for some of them by granting extensions. Here is a summary of those extensions:…

The Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act known as the “CARES Act” passed on March 27, 2020 provides $2 trillion in financial relief to individual taxpayers and loans and other concessions to businesses. The Act also includes several provisions affecting retirement plans which we will cover in later blog posts. For now, we’ll focus on two important provisions that can benefit participants in 401(k)and profit sharing plans: The normal 10% early distribution penalty is…

This is the first in a series of articles on the retirement plan changes that are part of the SECURE Act. The $1.4 trillion appropriations package signed into law by President Trump on December 20, 2019 designed to fund federal agencies through September of this year contained the most significant legislative enhancements to retirement plans in over 10 years. These law changes designed to encourage retirement savings are bundled up in one of those Congressional…