DWC is honored to announce its six 2018 summer intern consultants have successfully completed their summer program.

Facts

Our 401(k) plan allows new employees to make contributions on the first day of the quarter after they work for us for a year.  All of our full-time employees have been with us for a long time.  Most of our new hires are for short-term projects, so they almost always terminate employment in less than a year and never become eligible for our 401(k) plan.  Recently, however, we had two new hires that did stay with us for a year and should have become eligible for the plan.  One of them heard about the plan from a co-worker and submitted a deferral election form, but since we are not used to new hires sticking around that long, we overlooked implementing the election.  The other never knew about the plan at all.

Whether a company is small or large, chances are it offers employees a 401(k). But this well-intentioned benefit has become target practice for attorneys, with lawsuits against companies ranging from those with $10 million to tens of millions in assets.

Facts

People in the retirement plan business sure do like their acronyms.  All these letters get thrown around, and I do not know what half of them mean.

Facts

In order to be eligible for our company’s 401(k) plan, employees must have worked for us for at least a year and be a minimum of 21 years old.  They can join the plan on the next January 1^st or July 1^st following the date they meet those requirements.  Recently, we discovered that we allowed an employee to start contributing to the plan before he met those requirements.  He also received company matching contributions.

Corporate mergers and acquisitions can be stressful. When employees hear that their company is part of such a deal, they instinctively worry about their jobs. Even with reassurances that there's no need to worry about layoffs any time soon, employees should expect changes in their benefit plans, particularly their 401(k)s or other retirement savings plans. DWC Managing Partner Keith Clark highlights these changes in this article published by Kiplinger.

Facts

When certain employees terminate employment with our company, we agree to continue severance payments for a period of time after they leave.  Some of these employees have asked us to continue withholding 401(k) contributions from their severance pay.

Facts

ABC Company maintains a 401(k) plan that includes the following provisions:

• It operates on a calendar year.
• Compensation is defined as W2 wages with pre-tax deferrals added back and no exclusions.
• Eligible participants can defer up to the IRS limit $18,500 + $6,000 for those age 50 or older (2018 limits, indexed for inflation)
• The company provides a match equal to 100% of the first 5% deferred by each participant, calculated using compensation and deferrals for the full year.

In addition to regular compensation, ABC pays performance-based bonuses at the end of each calendar quarter.

While compiling the year-end census, it was noted that the overall deferral percentages did not appear quite right for certain employees based on their elections.  On closer review, it was determined that employees who received quarterly bonuses did not have any 401(k) deferrals withheld from those amounts.  With no deferrals withheld, ABC also did not make the corresponding matching contributions.

Facts

Our company has a safe harbor 401(k) plan.  In addition to employees making deferrals, we make a company contribution equal to 3% of each person’s compensation.  We deposit both types of contributions each pay period, so in theory at least, we should be all set by the end of each year.  However, it seems that each year, our TPA comes back to us with adjustments that need to made.  They tell us that it has something to do with how we determine compensation.