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Getting It Right: Your Form 5500 Bookmark


If your business offers a 401(k) plan—or another type of qualified retirement plan—you have been completing and submitting a 5500 form every year since the plan was initiated. And every year the IRS, the Department of Labor and the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation use the information contained in the 5500 to assess your plan’s compliance and its ability to protect the employees who are contributing.


A Plan Fiduciary's Responsibilities Bookmark

The term “fiduciary” gets used a lot these days; sometimes, we suspect, without a true understanding of what the term means and how fiduciary responsibility applies to our industry. It’s a corner of the retirement plan industry that can be a little murky.

Year-End Compliance Testing Overview Bookmark

The end of the calendar year is fast approaching which means the plan year end for many qualified plans. It will be time for plan sponsors to collect complete employee data to enable their service providers to perform the numerous compliance tests required to retain the plans taxqualified status.

The Ultimate Plan Sponsor Checklist Bookmark

While they don't have a book called Retirement Plan Sponsorship for Dummies, they should. So in the interim, here is a checklist that plan sponsors should review that can help them develop good practices and avoid unnecessary liability in their stewardship of retirement plans for their employees.

How to Survive a Visit from the IRS or DOL Bookmark

There are few things that will give a person that sinking feeling in the pit of their stomach like opening the mailbox and seeing an envelope with the words "Internal Revenue Service" (or Department of Labor) in the return address. It is similar to seeing that police car as you drive down the highway; you might not even be speeding, but you immediately slow down and wonder how you will look in stripes.