Art of the Qualified Plan Audit

The 2023 Form 5500 Annual Return/Report of Employee Benefit Plan includes some changes to previous filing requirements as published in the Federal Register ) and documented in the 2023 Form 5500 instructions. As discussed in our previous blogs “Learning How to Count Again” and “Counting What Counts, Counts the Auditors Out!,” one change was to … Continued

The Office of the Chief Accountant (OCA) in the Employee Benefit Security Administration (EBSA) of the Department of Labor (DOL) has released a 2023 Audit Quality Study covering the quality of audits being performed by independent qualified public accountants (IQPAs).  This is the fourth study to be performed with prior studies being performed in 2015, … Continued

Much like a good cup of coffee in the morning gets me going out the door, ready for retirement plan audits, Congress added some “PEP” to the retirement plan industry. But will the “PEP” end up being decaffeinated? Only time will tell. The SECURE Act For good or bad, changes to the retirement plan industry … Continued

Plan sponsors of retirement plans with hardship withdrawal provisions have come to realize that complying with hardship rules is sometimes a hardship. One of the most common questions we receive from clients involves the administration of the hardship withdrawal provisions. Changes from the SECURE 2.0 Act Luckily, the SECURE 2.0 Act in Section 312 has … Continued

Retirement plan administration is not a costless endeavor. Plan sponsors must administer the retirement plan following plan provisions, legislative requirements, and participant elections. To help administer the plan, plan sponsors hire service providers to help with recordkeeping, custody of assets, investment advisor tracking, and auditing the plan. Regulatory authorities want to promote retirement readiness with … Continued

Plan sponsors, third-party administrators, and other Form 5500 preparers take note! DOL representatives indicated that in some instances Part III – Accountant’s Opinion, Line 3(a) and 3(b) of the Schedule H is being filled out incorrectly. Marcus Aron (Division of Accounting Services) and Scott Albert (Division of Reporting Compliance) indicated at the 2023 Joint TE/GE … Continued

Posted By: Christopher Ciminera, CPA We’ve now come to the final act of our play and the last blog in our series on retirement plan benefit legislation updates. We’ve covered the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018, the SECURE Act, the CARES Act, and in the last blog we covered the updates to EPCRS with Revenue … Continued

Posted By: Christopher Ciminera, CPA In the last blog, we covered the storm that COVID-19 brought and the CARES Act legislation that Congress provided to help individuals obtain needed access to retirement funds. The storm clouds dissipated slightly and the IRS brought a little more sunshine with some positive changes to the EPCRS correction program. … Continued

Posted By: Christopher Ciminera, CPA Act 3 – The CARES Act In the last blog, we covered the remainder of the SECURE Act provisions. By itself, it changed the landscape of our play. But an unexpected storm came in the form of the COVID-19 pandemic creating a major cloud of uncertainty. The COVID-19 pandemic created … Continued

Posted By: Christopher Ciminera, CPA Act 2 – The SECURE Act…Continued In our last two blogs, we discussed the beneficial changes of the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 and Title 1 of the SECURE Act. But it doesn’t stop there because there were more changes included in the SECURE Act, which we will now discuss … Continued