Form 5500

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DWC |

Form 5500 – File It Late or Incomplete?

Every year, we receive inquiries from plan sponsors unable to file the Forms 5500 for their 401(k) plans by the deadline. Though often due to the 5500 audit not yet being complete, there can any ...
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Carter Kimball |

Cash Out Limit is Movin' On Up

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Adam C. Pozek |

Finding Balance with Form 5500

It’s rare that updates to the Form 5500 warrant little more than a yawn, if anyone other than those who prepare the forms even notice. That is NOT the case with changes issued by the Department of ...
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DWC |

MEP, PEP, or Stand Alone Plan, Which Is the Best Fit for Your Company?

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DWC |

Adding an Employee to Your Cash Balance Plan? You Should be Thinking This Article is "Just What I Needed"

Sponsoring a retirement plan can provide significant benefits to a company (and its participants). But with great benefits comes great responsibility…responsibility to follow all of the various ...
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DWC |

Cash Balance Compliance: "Takin' Care of Business"

Wow! We have covered a lot of ground over the last few entries, learning about how cash balance benefits are earned and funded. So far, our plan sponsor Robert Smith, Inc. has dealt with the ...
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DWC |

Is There an "Easy Button" for Setting Up a New Retirement Plan?

Facts As a small business owner, I’m constantly looking for cost-effective ways to improve the benefits I offer my employees. My industry is a competitive one, and it’s important to me to have a ...
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DWC |

Who Signs Our Form 5500?

Facts The person in our office who handles many of our administrative functions, including those related to our 401(k) plan, will be retiring soon, so we’re reviewing many of our internal processes ...
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DWC |

What Retirement Plan Filings and Records Must We Keep?

Facts We’ve sponsored a 401(k) plan since 2002 and the amount of paperwork and related records we’ve accumulated is incredible. Cleaning up these records has always been on my to-do list for a while, ...
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DWC |

Is It Possible to Avoid an Audit for the First (Short) Year of Our Plan?

Facts Our company has about 200 employees, and we launched a new 401(k) plan on October of last year. We were eager for all of our existing employees to get excited about this new benefit, so we ...
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DWC |

Meet the MEPs: Grab Bag

The Department of Labor’s new regulations that expand the availability of multiple employer plans cover quite a bit of ground. In previous posts, we’ve explored Association MEPs, PEO MEPs, Corporate ...
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DWC |

Are We Required to Force Former Employees to Take Their Money Out of Our Plan?

Facts We just received our year end testing and it mentioned that we have several terminated participants with small balances that we are required to distribute from the plan. I remember seeing ...
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DWC |

What is the Form 8955-SSA and What Does It Do?

Facts Our company has been very fortunate to have low turnover over the years. Those that have left either were not eligible for our 401(k) plan, or they had very small balances and had their ...
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DWC |

How (and for How Long) Can I Extend the Deadline to File our Form 5500?

Facts We’ve had our retirement plan for a couple of years now and feel that we are finally getting the hang of the various deadlines for our plan. There is just one deadline that I always have ...
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DWC |

Decoding the Alphabet Soup: What's With All the Acronyms? | Part 3

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.
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DWC |

What Is The Difference Between Fiduciary Liability Insurance and a Fidelity Bond?

Facts My company sponsors a 401(k) plan. With everything that has been in the news about retirement plan fiduciaries and some of the lawsuits against them, we are trying to decide whether or not we ...
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DWC |

Should We Split Our 401(k) Plan to Avoid the Annual Audit?

Facts Our company has been growing over the last couple of years, which is a good thing. However, after seeing your last two Questions of the Week (here and here), I am concerned about the need to ...
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DWC |

How Do You Select a CPA for Your Annual 401(k) Audit?

Facts With over 100 participants in our 401(k) plan in 2017, we have learned that our plan will now require an audit each plan year from an Independent Qualified Public Accountant (IQPA). This will ...
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DWC |

When Does My Plan Need An Outside Audit?

Facts We are a small business that has been growing quite a bit in the last couple of years and are now up to about 100 employees. Our company has a 401(k) plan and most of the employees who are ...
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DWC |

How Do We Report a Plan Merger on Form 5500?

Facts Our company sponsors two separate 401(k) plans, each of which covers a different group of our employees. Due to some internal changes, we now want to merge those plans so that we only have a ...
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DWC |

Do We Need an IRS Favorable Determination Letter for Former Employees to Roll Over Their Balances?

Facts We recently processed a rollover from our 401(k) plan for a former employee who wants to roll her balance into her new employer’s plan. Shortly after the payment was processed, the former ...
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DWC |

Form 5500 FAQs

The Form 5500 is an information return that is filed, usually with the Department of Labor, each year to provide certain details about the operations and financial status of an employee benefit plan. ...
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