We Just Need Your Compliance…IRS Announces Pilot Pre-Examination Program for Qualified Plans

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by Lyn Domenick

IRS Employee Plans has just announced a pilot program for pre-examination compliance checks of qualified retirement plans, beginning this month. If your plan is targeted, you will receive a letter from the IRS notifying you that your retirement plan has been selected for an upcoming IRS examination. What’s new under the pilot program is that the IRS will give you 90 days to perform your own self-compliance check and determine if the plan is in compliance with current IRS guidance, with the enticement that this self-review may avoid an IRS examination.

During the 90 days, you would complete a compliance review of your plan and, if you do not find any errors, you would assert to the IRS that the plan meets current tax law requirements. Or, if you discover some matters that need correction, you may correct mistakes using the self-correction principles or the voluntary compliance program (VCP) under the IRS correction program, EPCRS. If the errors are eligible for self-correction under EPCRS, it appears that no penalty will apply. If the errors are eligible for VCP but not self-correction, the IRS may issue a closing agreement and assess a fee based on the VCP fee that would otherwise have been charged if the plan had filed a VCP application under EPCRS before this process had begun. If the IRS disagrees with the correction–or if you fail to respond to the IRS within the 90-day period–the IRS will likely schedule a limited or full-scope examination. Read more

Every Little Thing … Considerations Before Adding Crypto to a 401(k) Plan

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by Alex Smith

Fidelity Investments recently announced that it will offer its 401(k) plan clients the opportunity to offer bitcoin as a 401(k) plan investment option later this year.  While this may sound intriguing to some plan fiduciaries and participants, plan fiduciaries should proceed with extreme caution.

Based on the Department of Labor’s (DOL) public pronouncements, it appears the DOL has serious doubts about whether 401(k) plan fiduciaries who include cryptocurrency among their 401(k) plan’s investment options comply with their ERISA fiduciary duties.  In March, the DOL issued Compliance Assistance Release No. 2022-01, in which it expressed “serious concerns” about the prudence of 401(k) plan fiduciaries including cryptocurrency as a 401(k) plan investment option and announced it plans to conduct an investigative program related to cryptocurrency investments by 401(k) plans.  For more information on Compliance Assistance Release No. 2022-01, please see our prior blog post Can’t Touch This … DOL Discourages Plans From Investing in Cryptocurrency.  Following Fidelity’s announcement, a DOL official expressed “grave concerns” about the offering and indicated that the DOL intends to meet with Fidelity to discuss its concerns in comments to the Wall Street Journal. Read more

How Much is that (Investment) in the Window…A Higher Level of Fiduciary Oversight Could be Required for 401(k) Plan Brokerage Windows

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by Brenda Berg

Fiduciaries of 401(k) plans and other retirement plans know that they must prudently monitor the investment options available to participants in the plan, but are they monitoring participants’ investments made through a plan’s brokerage window? Recent commentary from the Department of Labor (DOL) on cryptocurrency investments suggests maybe fiduciaries should be – and that the DOL may check in on that soon.[i]

A “brokerage window” or “self-directed brokerage account” can allow participants access to a broad array of investments beyond the regular investment menu under the plan. Most plan fiduciaries have not paid much attention to the actual brokerage window investments. This is not surprising given the DOL’s relative lack of focus on the matter. The DOL had issued guidance in 2012 that the investment disclosure portion of the fee disclosure rules could apply to brokerage window investments in certain cases but after pushback due to the administrative burdens, the DOL withdrew that guidance. In 2014 the DOL issued a Request for Information about brokerage window practices but no further guidance was issued. Read more

Can’t Touch This … DOL Discourages Plans From Investing in Cryptocurrency

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by Becky Achten

Among the many phrases of ERISA, one that is familiar to investment fiduciaries is the requirement to choose investments with the care, skill, prudence, and diligence that a prudent person who is familiar with such matters would use. Recently the Department of Labor (DOL) issued guidance on how this prudence standard applies to fiduciaries who offer cryptocurrency investment alternatives to participants.

In Compliance Assistance Release 2022-01, the DOL reminds fiduciaries of their important role in selecting investments for participant direction. Plan fiduciaries must evaluate each investment option made available to participants to ensure they are prudent. Failure to remove an imprudent investment is a breach of duty. Read more

What Doesn’t Kill You Makes You Stronger… New Audit Requirements for Retirement Plans

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by Bret F. Busacker

For many retirement plan sponsors, Form 5500 preparation season is underway.  Plan sponsors should be aware that things have changed with the Form 5500 audit requirements and procedures.  These changes push more responsibility to plan sponsors and require plan sponsors to better understand the representations they are making to the auditors as part of the 2021 plan audit (and beyond). So what has changed?

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Bye Bye Bye . . . Or Not. Rehiring Retirees in Pay Status

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by Leslie Thomson

If your qualified pension plan does not provide for in-service distributions and has commenced benefit distributions to a retiree who experienced a bona fide retirement, the IRS says your plan may be able to rehire that retiree and let him or her continue to receive benefit payments upon rehire. Read more

It’s [Not] Too Late Baby, Now It’s [Not] Too Late…for Required Minimum Distributions

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by Lyn Domenick

If you have participants in your retirement plan who are old enough to identify Carole King as the artist who released the song “It’s Too Late” some 50 years ago, this blog’s for you. Late payment of required minimum distributions (RMDs) is an ongoing source of plan sponsor headaches. What do you do when they occur?  As background, qualified plans are subject to the minimum distribution rules that generally require participants to commence payments no later than the April 1st following the year in which the participant attains age 72 (prior to January 1, 2020, age 70-1/2) unless the participant is still actively employed and is not a 5% owner. For various reasons the RMD deadline is sometimes missed and the plan administrator is faced with how to correct the late RMD error. Proper correction of missed RMDs is essential to ensure continued plan qualification. However, plan participants are also subject to stiff penalty taxes equal to 50% of the missed RMD amounts, which is a headache of a different sort.

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The Tide is High…Keep Holding On For More Retirement Plan Fee Litigation

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by Brenda Berg

The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling this week in Hughes v. Northwestern University will do nothing to stem the rising tide of retirement plan fee litigation. But the ruling doesn’t mean fiduciary breach claims are more likely to be successful either. Instead, the Court kept its ruling very narrow: a broad investment menu with some prudent funds will not automatically mean the fiduciaries are off the hook for offering imprudent funds.

 

The plaintiffs in Hughes were participants in two 403(b) retirement plans sponsored by Northwestern University. The participants brought claims for breach of fiduciary duty against the University, the retirement plan committee, and the individuals who administered the plans. The participants alleged the fiduciaries breached their duty of prudence by: (1) allowing recordkeeping fees that were too high; (2) allowing plan investments with excessive investment fees; and (3) providing participants too many investment options (over 400!) which resulted in participant confusion and poor investment decisions. Read more

Write This Down … Participants Have to Follow the Plan’s Beneficiary Designation Procedures

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by Elizabeth Nedrow

The principles governing how ERISA plans determine a participant’s beneficiary haven’t changed much since the country singer George Strait sang “Write this down” in 1999. In short, the participant has to write it down … on the forms and following the procedures established by the plan.

Recently we’ve seen several examples of family members of deceased employees who are surprised by the plan’s record of who was designated as beneficiary. They have tried to argue that the deceased employee’s will should be allowed to designate a beneficiary, or that the plan should look to state laws regarding estates. However, the courts have clearly established that those extraneous sources do not affect the plan’s process. (Most famous are the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2001 Egelhoff decision, and its 2009 Kennedy v. DuPont decision.) Read more

Here I Go Again in the Plan…Treatment of Rehired Employees

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by Benjamin Gibbons

As a result of the current labor shortage that many employers are currently faced with, more and more companies are finding themselves rehiring former employees.  If those former employees previously participated in an employer’s 401(k) plan prior to their severance from employment, such employers should review their 401(k) plan documents to see how such rehired employees are treated under those plans. Read more