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).

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.

In “The DOL can use large retirement plan filings to uncover missing welfare plan filings”, we discussed the importance of plan sponsors not forgetting to file a Form 5500 for their health and welfare plans when filing the annual Form 5500 for their retirement plan.

I recently heard a discussion about variances on how people pronounce certain words.

As required by IRC Section 415, the IRS has announced cost-of-living adjustments that should be noted for retirement planning purposes.

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.

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).