Posted by Maria T. Hurd, CPA, RPA Does your 401(k) or 403(b) plan auditor belong to the AICPA’s Employee Benefit Plan Audit Quality Center (EBPAQC)? To demonstrate their commitment to quality in the performance of ERISA audits, 2,600 CPA firms, about a third of the firms that perform EBP audits, have become members of the Employee Benefit Plan Audit Quality … Continued
Posted by Maria T. Hurd, CPA, RPA The AICPA Employee Benefit Plan Digital Badges: How can plan sponsors evaluate prospective auditors who are equally credentialed with digital badges? Is your auditor a Jack of all trades, but a master of none? As the results of the DOL studies on audit quality shift the industry focus to the qualifications of employee … Continued
Posted by Maria T. Hurd, CPA, RPA Testing the work of a specialist in a retirement plan audit: How much expertise does the financial statement auditor need? Service providers to the employee benefit plan (EBP) industry are often highly intelligent people that talk in “code”: Internal Revenue Code and ERISA Regulation sections. The legislation that regulates retirement plans encompasses … Continued
Posted by Maria T. Hurd, CPA, RPA UPDATED 7/11/19 Tips and Traps of Compensation: Part I – The Trouble with True-Ups or Lack of True-Ups When 401(k) and 403(b) plans provide that the match contribution is calculated annually, but administratively, the deposit is done on a payroll by payroll basis, it is important for the plan sponsor to understand and … Continued
Posted by Tyler Starr, CPA The IRS issued a private ruling on August 17, 2018, to allow an unnamed company to implement a new type of benefit for employees with student loan debt who were eligible to participate in its 401(k) plan. Prior to the private ruling, the company offered a 5% match contribution if employees contributed at least 2% … Continued
On April 19th, the IRS issued an update to the EPCRS which expands the Self-Correction Program (SCP) to cover certain plan loan failures.
Posted by Maria Hurd, CPA Disclaimer: All blog posts are valid as of the date published. In a highly regulated industry with complicated rules that always have exceptions (except when the exception does not apply) it is inevitable that sooner or later a failure to follow the plan document will take place. Such operational errors can be corrected through the … Continued
In this world, nothing can be said to be certain, except death, taxes, and retirement plan operational errors. Two decades of plan audits have shown time and time again that even the most accurate plan sponsor is not immune from making one of the common errors.
The IRS is striving to make the process of taking hardship distributions “a little less hard” through proposed regulation issued on November 14th, 2018, ushered by the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 (BBA).
The IRS has announced cost-of-living adjustments that should be noted for retirement planning purposes.
Below is a chart that outlines employee benefit plan limits for 2019: