Category: Plan Administration

The 2023 DOL Audit Quality Study: Slight Improvements in Audit Quality but Still Concerning

March 07, 2024

The Office of the Chief Accountant (OCA) in the Employee Benefit Security Administration (EBSA) of the Department of Labor (DOL) has released a 2023 Audit Quality Study covering the quality of audits being performed by independent qualified public accountants (IQPAs).  This is the fourth study to be performed with prior studies being performed in 2015, … Continued

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Pooled Employer Plans (PEPs): The Basics

October 31, 2023

PEPs were established in section 101 of the Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement Act of 2019 (SECURE Act), which amended ERISA and the IRC, to allow unrelated employers to join a defined contribution retirement plan maintained by a pooled plan provider (PPP) acting as the plan’s administrator and named fiduciary. A PEP, as … Continued

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What Information Do You Need for our 401(k) Audit?

September 27, 2023

Nervous apprehension tends to overwhelm new 401(k) audit clients who don’t know how involved they will need to be in the document production for the audit. Often, they are hopeful that one or more of their service providers will “take care of everything” as they promised. The bottom line is that the extent of the … Continued

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Could I Fail my First 401(k)/403(b) Plan Financial Statement Audit?

September 19, 2023

Death by a thousand cuts. That’s what initial 401(k) and 403(b) audit clients fear their first financial statement audit will feel like. Fear of the unknown leads the human mind to worst case scenarios. Could I fail the audit? Sure, anything is possible. Will I fail my first audit? Not likely. Even if the audit … Continued

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SECURE 2.0 Turned Overpayment Errors into Lucky Mistakes

June 28, 2023

In the past, innocent participants paid the price for their employers’ mistakes In our previous blog Give it BACK!!!”…”No!”…”OK, Keep It!, we described how the previous law required retirement plan fiduciaries to take reasonable action to recover any overpayment of plan benefits, even when the overpayment is generally the employer’s fault. Reasonable action meant an … Continued

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Will the Long-Term Part-Time Rules Eliminate the Permitted Exclusions for 403(b) Plans?

June 06, 2023

In its quest to Set Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement, SECURE 2.0 enhanced the Long-Term Part-Time (LTPT) rules of Secure 1.0 by making them applicable to 403(b) plans. Since employees are more likely to contribute to an employer-sponsored retirement arrangement than an Individual Retirement Account, and more Americans are working part-time since the pandemic, … Continued

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Counting what Counts, Counts the Auditors Out!

April 18, 2023

Money Talks: Price Sometimes Trumps Value Small retirement plans are exempt from the financial statement audit retirement for a reason: not because they don’t need the oversight or the help, but because audits are not practical, affordable, or cost-effective for them. In the real world, money talks. If small plans or their plan sponsors had … Continued

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Learning How to Count Again

March 29, 2023

Retirement plan administration is not a costless endeavor. Plan sponsors must administer the retirement plan following plan provisions, legislative requirements, and participant elections. To help administer the plan, plan sponsors hire service providers to help with recordkeeping, custody of assets, investment advisor tracking, and auditing the plan. Regulatory authorities want to promote retirement readiness with … Continued

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2023 Plan Limits

October 24, 2022

Posted By: Saaib T. Uppal, CPA, QKA IRS Announces Increases on Benefits and Contributions Dollar Limitations for 2023 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 2023: Plan Limits RETIREMENT & SOCIAL SECURITY 2023 Limit 2022 Limit 2021 Limit … Continued

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Universal Availability Audit Steps

June 09, 2022

Posted by Maria T. Hurd, CPA Yes, the Audit Extends to Excluded 403(b) Employees: Testing Compliance with Universal Availability It’s never a good sign when an employer sponsoring a 403(b) plan says: “You don’t need to see backup for employees who are excluded from the plan.” Ohh! But we do! Not often, but sometimes, clients … Continued

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Belfint Lyons Shuman is a Certified Public Accounting (CPA) firm that audits Defined contribution plans (profit-sharing, 401(k), 403(b) , 401(a), 457(b))), and Defined benefit plans (pension and cash balance), and Health and welfare plans. We serve a variety of plan sponsors including for-profit, nonprofit, governmental, and Taft-Hartley collectively-bargained plans located in Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, Washington, D.C., Virginia, Massachusetts, and nationally. For additional information contact us at info@belfint.com