Art of the Qualified Plan Audit

Posted by Maria T. Hurd, CPA, RPA For 403(b) plan eligibility determinations, the IRS says that “Once In, Always In” is much better than “In and Out,” so are your part-time employees “In or Out” or “In and Out”? Part-time workers and transient workers have always posed a challenge for plan sponsors trying to determine … Continued

Posted by Christopher J. Ciminera, CPA, QKA Update – April 29, 2020 On Wednesday, April 29, 2020 the Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) also posted a Disaster Relief Notice 2020-01. In this notice, the EBSA provides relief to plan sponsors regarding the possibility of lags in deposits due to the recent COVID-19 issues which was … Continued

Posted by Maria T. Hurd, CPA, RPA In pandemic times, employer contributions to retirement plans are not immune to cost-cutting initiatives, as corporate cash flows and liquidity dwindle. However, discontinuing discretionary contributions does not always eliminate all employer contribution requirements, and it is important for employers to anticipate and budget for any contributions that cannot … 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 … Continued

The Auditing Standards Board (ASB) has released a Final Balloted Draft of Statement on Auditing Standards, Forming an Opinion and Reporting on Financial Statements of Employee Benefit Plans Subject to ERISA ( Final Balloted Draft).

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).

In the 14th century epic poem the Troilus and Criseyde, Geoffrey Chaucer portrays a tragic love tale between Troilus, a Trojan warrior, and Criseyde, the daughter of a Greek fortuneteller.

When auditors identify operational errors, clients and service providers often ask whether we can ignore them since they are immaterial to the financial statements. 

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.