With the looming end of the determination letter program as we know it, the IRS has issued an updated Revenue Procedure for the Employee Plans Compliance Resolutions System (EPCRS). Released on September 29, 2016, Rev. Proc. 2016-51 updates the EPCRS procedures, replaces Rev. Proc. 2013-12 and integrates the changes provided in Rev. Proc. 2015-27 and Rev. Proc. 2015-28. The updated revenue procedure is effective January 1, 2017 and its provisions cannot be used until that date. Rev. Proc. 2013-12, as modified by Rev. Proc. 2015-27 and Rev. Proc. 2015-28, should be used for any corrections under the EPCRS for the remainder of 2016. Highlights from the new revenue procedure are outlined below.

Changes

• Determination Letter Applications. Determination letter applications are no longer
  

For many years, the PBGC has been helping reunite missing participants with their benefits under single-employer defined benefit plans. Now, a new PBGC proposed rule may open up the program to missing participants under other terminated plans.

Under this proposed rule, terminated defined contributions plans may choose to transfer benefits of missing participants to the PBGC or to establish an IRA to receive the transfer and send information to the PBGC about the IRA provider.   The PBGC will attempt to locate the missing participants and add them to a searchable database. The PBGC notes that once the program is established, it may issue guidance making the reporting requirement mandatory for defined contribution plans as authorized under section 4050 of ERISA.

The PBGC will accept the transfer of accounts of

When the IRS announced that it would virtually eliminate the determination letter program for individually designed retirement plans, many practitioners moved through the classic Kübler-Ross five stages of grief (see the picture at the right).  Some have yet to finish.  In Announcement 2016-32, the IRS requested comments on how these plans can maintain compliance going forward since determination letters are no longer available.

As a general rule, the IRS used to deny plans the ability to incorporate tax code provisions by reference (rather than reciting them wholesale in the plan), except for a very short list available here.  The IRS is asking if there are additional provisions that would also be appropriate to incorporate by reference.  This would avoid the need to reproduce these provisions wholesale and run the risk of

As retirement plan professionals know, certain distributions from plans and IRAs to taxpayers can be rolled over to another plan or IRA within 60 days. Of course, sometimes 60 days is just not enough and the IRS recognizes that, having permitted a seemingly innumerable number of private letter rulings granting extensions.  These often occur where a financial advisor gave bad advice or made some kind of mistake or where some tragedy worthy of a blues or country song (or worse) befell the taxpayer that made it impossible to complete the rollover in 60 days.

The IRS has had a small cottage industry the last decade or so of granting private letter rulings extending the 60-day period for these rollovers.  But now, they’ve decided to let plans and IRAs just take the taxpayer’s word

As we previously reported, the IRS had said last year that determination letter program for retirement plans would largely be going away. Rev. Proc. 2016-37 includes information with respect to the future of the determination letter program.  As highlighted in a recent IRS webcast, a noteworthy development is that “subject to IRS resources” that post-initial determination letters may be available after 2017 in specified circumstances:

(1) significant law changes,

(2) new plan designs, and

(3) Plan types that can’t convert to a pre-approved format.

Number 3 means complex plans that do not fit on a pre-approved document may, ‘subject to IRS resources’ as published annually, be able to be submitted for a ruling under the determination letter program.  Therefore, complex individually designed plans may still have hope that the IRS will

Typically, when a participant receives annuity payments from a defined benefit pension plan where he or she has a basis in the benefit (what Code Section 72 calls an “investment in the contract”), a portion of the payment is treated as a recovery of that basis. Therefore, it is not taxable to the participant.  That portion is determined under the rules of Code Section 72.  The most common way in which an employee has basis in his or her benefit is by making after-tax contributions.  Currently, this is more common in governmental defined benefit plans than other plans.

However, it was not clear how these basis recovery rules worked in the context of phased retirement distributions. The IRS recently issued Notice 2016-39 to address the

The United States Department of Labor recently issued a Final Rule updating the Fair Labor Standards Act (the “FLSA”) that includes an increase in the standard salary level and that will take effect December 1, 2016. Under the FLSA, certain employees may be exempted from overtime pay for working more than 40 hours per week if their job duties primarily involve executive, administrative, or professional duties and their salary is equal to or greater than the required salary levels.

Among other changes made by the Final Rule, the threshold salary levels have been dramatically increased and will continue to be automatically updated every three years in the future. Prior to the Final Rule, the standard salary level was $455/week or $23,660/year.  As of December 1, 2016, the standard salary

It was bound to happen. For several years, the plaintiffs’ bar has sued fiduciaries of large 401(k) plans asserting breach of their duties under ERISA by failing to exercise requisite prudence in permitting excessive administrative and investment fees.  It may be that the plaintiffs’ bar has come close to exhausting the low-hanging lineup of potential large plan defendants, and, if a recent case is any indication, the small and medium-sized plan fiduciaries are the next target.  See, Damberg v. LaMettry’s Collision Inc., et al. The allegations in this class action case parallel those that have been successful in the large plan fee dispute cases. Now that the lid is off, small and medium sized plan fiduciaries should be forewarned of the need to employ solid plan governance

One might be led to believe that the current administration is in favor of expanding retirement savings opportunities. After all, the DOL has somewhat apologetically subverted ERISA to allow the States to sponsor employer-based savings plans.  And the President’s recently proposed budget endeavors to provide a national retirement savings program. (See page 135 of the General Explanations of the Administration’s Fiscal Year 2017 Revenue Proposals) So why then would the IRS reverse two decades of regulation that favors cross-tested plans in small businesses, an action that might cause many small employers to terminate their qualified plans or amend them to reduce the employer contribution to employee’s accounts?

Some background may

The Department of Labor (“DOL”) has recently implemented an initiative to investigate the manner in which defined benefit plans of large employers comply with the required minimum distribution rules set forth in Section 401(a)(9) of the Internal Revenue Code (“Code”). The initiative is focused on the extent to which large employers have processes in place to (i) locate missing plan participants, (ii) inform deferred vested participants that a benefit is payable, and (iii) commence benefit payments in a timely fashion by each participant’s “required beginning date” (generally, the April 1 following the later of the calendar year in which the participant reaches age 70½ or the calendar year in which the participant terminates employment).

In light of the DOL’s audit