Art of the Qualified Plan Audit

The Rule Individuals who turn age 72 after December 31, 2022, AND who reach age 73 before January 1, 2033, have a compulsory RMD age of 73. What It Means Individuals who turn 73 during 2023 must take an RMD for 2023 by April 1, 2024, but individuals who turn 72 during 2023 do not … Continued

Retirement Readiness vs. Immediate Financial Needs Life is a balancing act. Regulators strive to fight leakage by imposing penalties on early distributions, but they also don’t want to add to legitimate unforeseen and extreme emergency situations by imposing penalties when participants are in trouble. At the same time, regulators don’t want to impose administrative burdens … Continued

SECURE 2.0: Mandatory Automatic Enrollment Coupled with Corrective Contribution Relief Employees Plan to Make the Right Choice…Later When it comes to choosing to save for retirement, people tend to be short-sighted. Many eligible employees don’t choose to participate in their employer-sponsored retirement plans. Behavioral finance studies show that people tend to imagine themselves making the … Continued

Increased Retirement Savings; Enhanced Self-Correction of Operational Failures; Decreased Costs to Implement a Plan The SECURE 2.0 Act of 2022 (Act) was signed into law on December 29, 2022. The Act strives to increase retirement savings, improve retirement plan operation and correction rules, and decrease the cost of setting up a retirement plan. Plan amendments … Continued

Posted By: Christopher Ciminera, CPA We’ve now come to the final act of our play and the last blog in our series on retirement plan benefit legislation updates. We’ve covered the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018, the SECURE Act, the CARES Act, and in the last blog we covered the updates to EPCRS with Revenue … Continued

Posted By: Christopher Ciminera, CPA In the last blog, we covered the storm that COVID-19 brought and the CARES Act legislation that Congress provided to help individuals obtain needed access to retirement funds. The storm clouds dissipated slightly and the IRS brought a little more sunshine with some positive changes to the EPCRS correction program. … Continued

Posted By: Christopher Ciminera, CPA Act 3 – The CARES Act In the last blog, we covered the remainder of the SECURE Act provisions. By itself, it changed the landscape of our play. But an unexpected storm came in the form of the COVID-19 pandemic creating a major cloud of uncertainty. The COVID-19 pandemic created … Continued

Posted By: Christopher Ciminera, CPA Act 2 – The SECURE Act…Continued In our last two blogs, we discussed the beneficial changes of the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018 and Title 1 of the SECURE Act. But it doesn’t stop there because there were more changes included in the SECURE Act, which we will now discuss … Continued

Posted By: Christopher Ciminera, CPA Act 2 – The SECURE Act In Act 1 of our play, Retirement Plan Legislative Update: Act 1 – Bipartisan Budget Act, we covered the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018. This was positive legislation, but a major change to legislation was yet to come – the Setting Every Community Up … Continued

Posted By: Christopher Ciminera, CPA  The world has gone through many sudden and unpredictable changes in the last few years. The retirement plan industry has seen many changes, as well, which has had impactful legislation and guidance that changed the retirement landscape in many positive ways. With all these changes, it seems the world and … Continued