Compensation and Distribution Issues: A Deep Dive for Retirement Plan Auditors

David Guadagnoli presented "Compensation and Distribution Issues: A Deep Dive for Retirement Plan Auditors," at a webinar hosted by the New York Society of CPAs (NYSSCPA) on March 18, 2021.

Retirement plans may have multiple definitions of compensation – for nondiscrimination testing, limits testing and benefit accruals. Understanding how definitions interact, and how different definitions can be used, is important in understanding a plan sponsor’s objectives and in ensuring that participants are receiving the benefits provided by a plan. On audit, the IRS will certainly look closely at compensation and you should as well. And while on the subject of government audits, both the IRS and the DOL are very focused on distributions, generally, and on terminated and "missing" participants in particular.

David reviewed recent guidance and discuss what he is seeing as best practices with respect to distribution processing.