Art of the Qualified Plan Audit

In late 2018, the Auditing Standards Board (ASB) voted to issue a final balloted draft of SAS 13X, which addresses the auditor’s responsibility to form an opinion and report on the audit of financial statements of employee benefit plans subject to the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974 (ERISA).

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

In this world, nothing can be said to be certain, except death, taxes, and retirement plan operational errors. Two decades of plan audits have shown time and time again that even the most accurate plan sponsor is not immune from making one of the common errors.

By special request, following is a summary of the basic available safe harbor formulas, with no extra editorials. See bullet points for information about enhanced match opportunities.

In my previous blog, “How to Order a Triple Stack Match for your Plan,” I discussed the basics of the triple stack match formula.

In my last blog, Almost There: Moving Closer to the New EBP Audit Standard , I gave a brief background on what led to SAS 13X – Statement on Auditing Standards Forming an Opinion and Reporting on Financial Statements of Employee Benefit Plans Subject to ERISA (“Final Balloted Draft”) and its proposed changes to the audit report.

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).

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: