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…

Service providers for 401(k) and other retirement plans require access to personal data on participants including name, age, address, date of hire, compensation and possibly social security number to provide recordkeeping services. Are these plan service providers simply taking advantage of a business opportunity or are they improperly exploiting information that is a  plan asset that plan fiduciaries must protect?…

If you’re an employer who has adopted a pre-approved defined benefit pension plan, it’s time to amend and restate your plan. All defined benefit plans using pre-approved plan documents must restate their plan before April 30, 2020. It’s important that you understand why your plan document must be restated. What follows is a non-technical explanation in Question and Answer format.…