The IRS recently announced a new 90-day pre-examination compliance pilot program for retirement plans. It is intended to ensure compliance with plan document and operational requirements under current tax law, giving plan sponsors an opportunity to self-correct issues in advance of a potential IRS plan review.
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A look at the retirement plan provisions featured in the proposed legislation known as the SECURE Act 2.0.
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A top-heavy determination can cast a bigger shadow than it should for those who may not be aware of the rules surrounding this nondiscrimination test for qualified retirement plans. Here's how you can help employers better understand top-heavy rules.
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The SECURE Act, passed into law during the last few days of 2019, was designed to make retirement plans more accessible to employees and less cumbersome for employers to sponsor and administer. The full impact of many of these changes has yet to be measured, but legislators are forging ahead with more proposals intended to help American workers’ save for retirement.
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On December 20, 2019, the Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement (SECURE) Act of 2019 was enacted. The SECURE Act is the most sweeping retirement legislation since the Pension Protection Act of 2006, and many of its provisions are designed to make retirement plans more accessible to employees and less cumbersome for employers.
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Every 401(k) plan is subject to certain year-end testing requirements (even plans that have adopted a safe harbor design feature). As the sponsor of your company’s 401(k) plan, you must ensure that plan contributions have not exceeded the annual limits set by federal tax law and are not discriminatory against lower paid workers.
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Last month, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) issued Final Regulations, which established rules around the Reportable Policy Sale provisions included in the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017 (TCJA).
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Small and mid-size businesses now have greater access to defined contribution retirement plans under regulations issued by the Department of Labor (DOL) on July 31, 2019. The regulations, which loosen prior restrictions on multiple employer plans, take effect on September 30, 2019. The DOL regulations permit employers to connect with associations of employers in a city, county, state or multi-state metropolitan area in order to offer defined contribution retirement benefits to employees. Employers also have the option of banding together by industry to achieve the same purpose.
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Mid-year offers opportunity to check in with your 401(k) plan clients to see how their plans fared on mid-year testing. These test results don’t count against the plan in any way, but they are a helpful gauge of whether the plan could fail nondiscrimination testing at year end–when there are consequences for failed testing results.
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Most 401(k) plans allow plan participants to access their retirement savings while they’re still working if they have a significant financial hardship. Recent legislation and subsequent IRS guidance have changed the rules governing these hardship distributions.
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