Art of the Qualified Plan Audit

When it comes to an employee benefit plan audit, having the right information ready in a timely fashion is imperative for a smooth and efficient audit. Since the retirement plan audit season is now going strong I am providing a link to the AICPA’s EBPAQC 403(b) Retirement Plan Audits Sample Auditor Request List for Plan Information.

In a previous blog, DOL Audit Quality Study: Employee Benefit Plan Auditors Are not Making the Grade, we discussed the results of the 2015 Audit Quality Study performed by the Department of Labor (DOL).

In my previous blog, “The Voluntary Fiduciary Correction Program – Overview”, I discussed the Voluntary Fiduciary Correction Program (VFCP).

By filing through the VFCP, a plan sponsor will receive a no-action letter from the EBSA indicating to the plan that the EBSA will not take civil action against the plan sponsor with regard to this specific transaction in the submission. It is also important to note that there is no application fee to file through the VFCP.

The Department of Labor (DOL) released its report on employee benefit plan audits (Assessing the Quality of Employee Benefit Plan Audits) on May 28, 2015. As I discussed in my last blog, DOL Audit Quality Study: Employee Benefit Plan Auditors Are not Making the Grade, the report is not favorable to auditors. The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants is making an effort to address these quality issues through its Enhancing Audit Quality initiative.

At last week’s American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) Employee Benefit Plan (EBP) Conference, the Department of Labor (DOL) compared auditing retirement plans to brain surgery. The analogy was meant to indicate that a patient would not seek out a general practitioner to perform brain surgery, due to the highly complex nature of the service and the lack of experience the general medical practitioner would have at performing the service.

We are more than halfway through the retirement plan audit season and we have noticed a number of common errors occurring with compensation. I previously discussed these issues in my blog series “Compensation: The Missing Link – Part 1” and “Compensation: The Missing Link – Part 2,” but we want to revisit the issue, since we are seeing this error occur on a rather consistent basis.

Imagine that I am standing over a hunched plan administrator in a dark room with a single bright light shone on them screaming “did you take money from the plan?!?”

When I was younger my little sister would come to the park with my friends and me. One day I was walking back with my friends and realized I forgot my sister who was left playing with friends.

Recent articles brought to my attention the phrase “cat fishing” which means wishful thinking or realizing that something is not what you originally thought.