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403(b)
Regulation Resources
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[Employer
Plan:
Church
of God Retirement Plan |
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| This information should not be considered tax or legal advice. The Board of Pensions stands ready to assist your organization as you work with your legal and tax advisers by providing resource information that you and your adviser may find beneficial. |
The
issuance of final 403(b) regulations caused a shift in employers’
responsibilities for the administration and compliance of all 403(b)
plans. Effective January 1,
2009, the IRS treats each “employer” (i.e. each organization,
including churches) that provides a 403(b) plan for its employees as
responsible for maintaining that “plan” and also for managing all
403(b) vendors. The
Church
of God Retirement Plan
that your organization provides to your employees is a valuable
benefit to them
and for your organization as you seek to retain talented, energetic
staff. Typically, Church
of God
employers use this plan as their sole retirement plan provider - and
compliance becomes less of a task. For
employers allowing employees to contribute to multiple 403(b)
arrangements, compliance requires considerably more effort.
One of the most important new requirements you will need to
comply with if your organization uses multiple 403(b) providers (or has
used multiple providers at any time since the beginning of 2005) is that
your organization will be responsible for ensuring vendor compliance
coordination. The
organization can designate compliance and other administrative
responsibilities to a Third-Party Administrator
(TPA) or one of the vendors, if the vendor agrees.
However, the Board of Pensions does not provide TPA services for
multi-vendor arrangements. You
will want to work with your legal counsel, your other 403(b) providers
and the Board of Pensions to understand and comply with these new
regulations so that your organization and retirement plan participants
avoid adverse tax consequences. Below,
you will find summarized explanations of regulations that impact your
organization as you move toward compliance. Written
plan document requirement ·
Identification of eligible employees ·
Statutory (legal) contributions limits ·
Time and form of benefits ·
Distribution restrictions The written plan can incorporate
materials from other documents such as written policies, employee
handbook descriptions and other related documents.
The Board of Pensions provides general plan documentation for the
Church
of God Retirement Plan v.20100626 (pdf). However,
since each employer in the Church
of God Retirement Plan
has flexibility related to certain plan provisions, your organization
must develop and maintain additional written rules and procedures
regarding your arrangements that address:
To help you with this, the Board of
Pensions has prepared an Eligibility
and Participation Schedule (pdf) to
document the additional written rules and procedures, unique to your
organization, that relate to your use of the Additional
actions required
The
purpose of the requirements for sharing information is to exchange
information necessary to satisfy the regulations and other tax
requirements of the Code. Such
information includes, but is not limited to:
This
information sharing requirement is very important because beginning
January 1, 2009, employers are responsible for ensuring overall
compliance with statutory and regulatory requirements.
If your organization offers more than one 403(b) provider
for its employees, the Board of Pensions is limited in the guidance we
can give. In this situation,
we welcome inquiries and may assist with general information that could
be helpful to the employer’s own legal counsel.
But the employer is responsible for coordinating compliance among
the different 403(b) providers.
If
your organization makes contributions to the Church
of God Retirement Plan
as a sole retirement plan provider, there is no need to coordinate
compliance among multiple 403(b) providers.
In this situation, the Board of Pensions can do more to help
ensure that your organization’s plan complies with all legal
requirements. However, your organization will still have to provide
information to the Board of Pensions so that it can ensure compliance. Other possible
compliance concerns There are other compliance issues that
could arise if your organization allows contributions to be made to
multiple 403(b) investment providers and if transfers of money are
permitted between these 403(b) providers.
Money can still be moved, but there are now additional
requirements on any such movement of 403(b) plan assets.
Additional
resources:
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Board of
Pensions of the Church of God |
