Art of the Qualified Plan Audit

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:

There has been a lot of talk about changes brought by the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (Tax Act) that President Trump signed last December.

There is a popular philosophical question that asks if a tree falls in a forest, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?

As auditors, we are required to review the controls in place at a plan sponsor of a retirement plan and its service providers to assess the risk of material misstatement resulting from control risk. In doing so, we constantly evaluate the adequacy of the control structure and recommend improvements to strengthen the processes to prevent errors.

Discrimination. It’s a concept that most people don’t associate with retirement plan savings.

The use of the wrong definition of compensation is the most common error found in employee benefit plan audits, and it can be a very costly mistake to correct in accordance with the provisions of the IRS’ Employee Plan Compliance Resolution System (EPCRS).

Plan administrators probably view the management representation letter as a document they must sign so they likely do so without reading it closely.

Along with the presidential election on Tuesday, November 8, another election that participants should have on their mind is the deferral for their retirement plan.

One of the most common operational errors when administering retirement plans is the failure to implement a participant’s elective deferral election or change in percentage.