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Can a Former Employee Roll a Coronavirus-Related Distribution Back into our Plan?

DWC 09/15/20
Facts Earlier this year, we decided to make the CARES Act coronavirus-related distributions (CRDs) available to participant in our 401(k) plan. We know that it is possible for participants to repay CRDs, but we didn’t anticipate any would be interested in that option. We’re glad that some do now want to repay, but we want to be sure we handle ...
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Is There an "Easy Button" for Setting Up a New Retirement Plan?

DWC 09/1/20
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 package that helps attract top talent and retain current employees too. Recently, my attention has turned toward implementing a retirement plan, but it ...
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How Can I Minimize my Risk When Reviewing and Approving Hardship Withdrawals?

DWC 08/25/20
Facts As a plan sponsor, I want my employees to have access to their retirement accounts in the event of a financial emergency. I know that offering hardship withdrawals could satisfy that goal, but after doing some reading, I’m a little nervous about the risk associated with reviewing and approving these types of requests. Not only that, but I ...
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Which Common Plan Fees Can (and Should) We Pay from Plan Assets?

DWC 08/18/20
Facts We are reviewing our company expense budget to identify any that we can eliminate or reduce. We’ve read that it is possible to pay expenses related to maintaining company retirement plans out of plan assets. We sponsor both a 401(k) plan and cash balance plan for our employees, so shifting some of those fees from the company to the plan ...
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What Are My Options (and Deadlines) for Implementing a Retirement Plan This Year?

DWC 08/11/20
Facts We’ve been debating implementing a 401(k) plan for 2020. After much back and forth, we’ve decided its “a go!” for this year. Since we are still in a more relaxed summer vacation mode, we’d like to wait until sometime this fall to really get rolling on implementation.
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Can We Offer Additional Matching Contributions Without Losing our Safe Harbor Status?

DWC 08/4/20
Facts We currently sponsor a 401(k) plan for our company. While we certainly want to be able to provide meaningful benefits to the owners, our goal is to encourage all our employees to save more for their retirement, and to reward those who do. We were failing our annual testing, so we implemented a safe harbor provision to provide a matching ...
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Can We Offer Higher Profit Sharing Contributions to Employees Based on Performance?

DWC 07/28/20
Facts We’ve had a 401(k) plan for years, but we are now looking at ways to make it a more strategic part of our overall compensation package. In one of your previous Questions of the Week, you mentioned that we cannot really give employees the choice between higher pay or a profit sharing contribution, but we would like to explore ways to use ...
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Can We Increase Profit Sharing Contributions and Decrease Salaries to Improve Testing and Save Money?

DWC 07/21/20
Facts We want to make job offers to some new employees and are looking strategically at our overall compensation package. Some of these candidates are seeking upwards of $130,000 which will make them highly compensated employees (HCEs) in 2021. We are thinking about negotiating a lower salary of $100,000 with a promise of $30,000 in profit sharing ...
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Must I Complete the Upcoming Mandatory Plan Document Restatement Before Terminating My Plan?

DWC 07/14/20
Facts I currently sponsor a 401(k) plan for my employees. As I start to consider retirement myself and eventual dissolution of the business, I’m compiling a list of all the things I need to do to wind down. One of those to-do items is to terminate the 401(k) plan.
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401(k) vs 403(b): Which Is the Best Choice for My Non-Profit?

DWC 06/23/20
Facts As the director of a not-for-profit organization, I’m looking at retirement plan options for our employees. The fiscal year ends June 30th and I’d love to implement something to benefit our employees beginning with the new year.
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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.