With the IRS’s focus on “black belt” business practices, it announced on November 21, 2016 a new process for its retirement plan audits. These rules center on the timing of the “Information Document Requests” (IDR), which are central to an audit. The problem, as tends to be the problem with many such structured business process improvement efforts, is that-as good as they may appear to the designer on paper-they often leave little room for the actual business experience.
Continue Reading The IRS Tightens Plan Examination Process With New Rules for Plan Sponsors and IRS Examiners
Auditing Distributed 403(b) (and 401(a)) Contracts
How do you audit a 403(b) in-kind distribution? There is no financial transaction, no cash changes hands, there is no change in investments. It really is only a nominal change in the records of the insurer. Yet, somehow, GAAP requires that the “transaction” be verified. There is no answer, yet, to this question, which means the industries (that is, auditors, insurers, and lawyers) will be pressed for finding a standardized approach for bringing audit certainty to this process. It even becomes a bigger issue than 403(b)s: QLACs and other distributed annuity contracts are all able to be distributed as “in-kind” distributions from 401(a) plans as well, and there is no acceptable “recordkeeping” method to audit.
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Website Privacy Policies and the Federal Trade Commission’s Authority over Retirement Plans
Remembering that ERISA does NOT preempt the application of other federal law (like the SEC, Anti-Money Laundering, and the Patriot Act rules-just to name a few), which we continue to learn to integrate into our practices, we now may find ourselves needing to deal with the Federal Trade Commissions standards as well. The issue arises from something as innocuous as the website privacy policies which are so commonplace on retirement plan vendor websites (you know, those things know one ever reads or pays attention to). Well, it appears to matter to the Federal Tead Commission.
Continue Reading Website Privacy Policies and the Federal Trade Commission’s Authority over Retirement Plans