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What Tax Credits are Available for Setting Up a New Retirement Plan?

DWC 01/14/20
Facts Our business is thinking of setting up a retirement plan. We’ve heard that there are new tax credits offered under the SECURE Act available to employers who set up new plans.
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How Do We Identify Highly Compensated Employees for the First Year Our Company Exists?

DWC 08/27/19
Facts We established our company on February 1st of this year, and now we are planning to launch our 401(k) plan. We know there are number of tests and determinations that require us to look at company history, but as a new company, we don’t really have much of a history to look at.
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How Can We Improve ADP/ACP Test Results Without Offering Safe Harbor?

DWC 06/18/19
Facts My architectural firm sponsors a 401(k) plan. We have 38 architects and 2 administrative assistants. We currently provide a matching contribution to participants and, some years, a profit sharing contribution too. I’m reluctant to utilize a safe harbor design, because I really value the vesting schedule on our employer contributions to help ...
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Top Heavy vs. ADP: What's the Difference?

DWC 05/7/19
Facts As a plan sponsor, I do my best to review the annual compliance reports my TPA sends to me, but to be honest, it might as well be written in a foreign language. For example, several of our participants were recently required to receive corrective refunds due to contributing too much for 2018. I thought it was because our plan was top heavy ...
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We Failed the ADP Test! What Did We Do Wrong and How Do We Fix It?

DWC 02/26/19
Facts Our TPA just sent us our annual compliance report, and it says we failed testing! This is the first year we’ve failed anything, and now we’re being told that we need to take money out of the plan in order to remedy the failure. I don’t understand why this is happening.
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How Can We Pass Nondiscrimination Testing with Low Non-HCE Participation?

DWC 01/22/19
Facts I am fed up with sponsoring my current retirement plan. My wife and I contribute the maximum amount we can in deferrals each year. Due to low participation by our employees, we fail ADP testing every year and have to take refunds.
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Can We Reduce the Number of HCEs in our Plan?

DWC 01/15/19
Facts We set up our company 401(k) plan soon after we started our business. At the time, we were a small tech company with only a couple of employees. Over the years the company has grown exponentially, and business has been good to us…really good. Because of this, the demographics of our company have changed completely. We have too many of our ...
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Why Does Your TPA Need Personal & Ownership Details from Company Owners?

DWC 10/2/18
Facts Our company sponsors a 401(k) plan for our employees. The owners of the company have always been somewhat secretive in terms of sharing detailed information about themselves and their families. The current environment of selling information for marketing use and identity theft has only intensified that.
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How Are Corrective Refunds Determined for a Failed ADP Test?

DWC 08/21/18
Facts Our 401(k) plan failed the ADP test for the first time this year. We decided to correct the failure by making refunds to the highly compensated employees instead of making additional contributions for the other participants. However, when we got the actual refund amounts from our TPA, we were surprised to see that those HCEs with the highest ...
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Decoding the Alphabet Soup: What's With All the Acronyms? | Part 2

DWC 08/14/18
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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The views expressed in this blog are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of any other person or organization. All content is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended to be tax or legal advice.