Welcome to the Education Center section of our site.

Tax qualified retirement plans are subject to various federal laws, such as ERISA and the Internal Revenue Code

The rules governing these plans are very complicated but they provide tremendous opportunities to our clients in the right situations. This section of our website is devoted to providing educational and informational materials to our clients and their advisors to assist them make informed decisions about their plans.

Employers that maintain qualified retirement plans that cover 100 or more participants generally need to engage an independent CPA firm each year to conduct an audit of those plans. We have listed below CPA firms we work with who provide these services.

Please feel free to contact them directly for more information.

In-plan rollovers to a Roth account in the same plan are now permitted. An important planning opportunity is available until December 31, 2010. See our summary memorandum below for more information.

When Do Retirement Plans Require Certified Audits?

Qualified retirement plans covering fewer than 100 participants are generally exempt from the requirement to engage a CPA to perform an annual audit of the plan’s financial statements. However in situations where more than 5% of the plan’s assets are not invested in “qualifying plan assets,” an audit is required unless certain requirements are met.

The following article and attachment summarizes the rules on when an audit is required even if the plan covers fewer than 100 participants.

It is a well known rule that an employer can only deduct compensation that is “reasonable.” Treatises have been written about what constitutes reasonable compensation.

We have located a great article written by Robert Wood and published by the Bureau of National Affairs summarizing ten things you should know about determining what is reasonable compensation.

Many S corporations pay the health premiums of their “2% shareholders.” We were recently asked whether these premiums constitute gross income for retirement plan purposes.

We were surprised to find there is not a well settled answer and our view is that the value of these premiums are includible in the shareholders’ compensation for retirement plan purposes.

We have prepared the attached article outlining our reasoning.

Can you remember the annual 401(k) contribution limit or what the compensation limit is for “highly compensated employees”?

Download our popular worksheet and you will have all of the pertinent dollar limits at your fingertips.

The Pension Protection Act of 2006 has created tremendous opportunities using defined benefit and cash balance plans.

This article describes this new opportunity and includes a chart of available contributions based on different age groups.

We offer a variety of articles you can download on important topics relating to qualified retirement plans.  Click the article you need and you can print or download the article to your computer.

Would you like to reprint one of our articles on your own letterhead?  Contact us and we will send you the article on MS Word and you can format it for your own letterhead.

Do you need information on a topic not covered below, click our Contact button on the Home page and tell us what you need.  We will do our best to get you the information you need.

We issue newsletters throughout the year.  We write our own newsletter and focus on information needed by our clients and their advisors.  We recommend you periodically flip through back newsletters as a “refresher” on topics you should be keeping up with.






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