Expanded “Amnesty” Program for Retirement Plans

The IRS has just released a rather significant expansion to its “amnesty program” for some mistakes made in the administration of tax-qualified retirement plans. (This is the IRS program known as the “Employee Plans Compliance Resolution System.”)

Very helpful correction opportunities are now available concerning mistakes in the following (and other) areas: plan loans, required minimum distributions, automatic enrollment features, Section 415 failures, and overpayments of benefits.

In all cases, the changes just announced make the corrections easier -- and in some cases less costly -- for employers.

Employers who already have detected an error in one of these areas should consider how these new rules expand their correction options. Also, because of the creation of these new rules, we encourage all employers to perform self-diagnostics of their plans’ operations to identify and correct errors before they are discovered by the IRS.

Please let us know if we can assist with your compliance and correction efforts.