FAQs

You can find all of our contact information on our Contact Us page.

Employer non-elective contributions, (also known as profit-sharing contributions), and employer matching contributions are contributions made by the employer to eligible participants.

The profit-sharing contribution is not contingent upon a participant deferring but is based upon the allocation formula in the adoption agreement and the compensation of the participant.

Employer matching contributions are only given to participants who are deferring and are based on a matching formula. The matching formula would define the amount of contributions and compensation to be considered and the rate of match. For example, under a matching formula of 50% up to 6% of compensation, a participant deferring 8% would receive a matching contribution of 3% of his or her compensation.

Under Department of Labor (DOL) rules, participant contributions must be deposited as of the earliest date the contributions could reasonably be segregated from the employer's general assets, but in no event later than the 15th business day of the month following the month in which the contributions were withheld from wages.

Small employers (100 or less employees) are subject to a safe harbor rule. They can automatically satisfy the DOL deadline requirement when participant contributions are deposited no later than the 7th business day following the date they were withheld from wages.

If you are making a discretionary profit-sharing contribution, annual discretionary employer match contribution or annual Safe Harbor contribution, it must be deposited by your tax filing deadline, including extension.

In 2025, the maximum a participant may contribute to the plan for the calendar year is ${$23,500}. If your plan allows catch-up contributions, a participant who is 50 years old or older may be able to contribute an additional ${$7,500} as a catch-up contribution. There are other limits that may also apply. Please contact your Plan Consultant for more details or check out the 2025 Retirement Plan Limits Chart.

Employers must transmit employee contributions to the 401(k) plan as soon as administratively possible. For plans with less than 100 employees, contributions will be deemed timely if deposited within seven business days of the pay date. For larger plans, the timeframe may be shorter.

Each plan has specific rules/information about who can and cannot take a loan or distribution.

You can find this information on the "Plan Highlights" page for your plan, by going to the PSL portal. On the PSL, look under the "Documents" tab to find your plan's Plan Highlights page. Next look for a section titled "Distributions." This section defines the types of distributions allowed for your plan, age requirements for taking different types of distributions, as well as sources allowed for each type of distribution.

If after reading the Plan Highlights you still have questions about whether a participant can take a loan or distribution, please contact your Plan Consultant or contact us directly through our Contact Us form.

The allowable reasons for a hardship will be defined in the "Hardship Self Certification Form" that you can find on the PSL under Documents > Administrative Forms.

If there is not one there, please reach out to the Processing Department or your Plan Consultant to request one be uploaded for your plan.

If you still have questions, or are unsure how to read the information, you can contact your Plan Consultant or our Processing Team or contact us directly through our Contact Us form.

The process is different depending on your recordkeeper/investment provider. Most recordkeepers will have an option where a participant can request a loan or distribution on their website, or the participant can call for help. We recommend utilizing the online option as it is more secure and there is less room for an incomplete form to be submitted.

If your plan has self-directed brokerage accounts (SDBAs) or pooled balance forward account(s), please reach out to the Processing Department or your Plan Consultant to get instructions, or use our Contact Us form.

We strive for a 1-3 business day turnaround; however this is only if the request is in good order and allowed at the time of the request per the Plan Document.

Please reach out to our Processing Department if you have questions regarding distributions, loans or hardships, or use our Contact Us form.

An RMD, or Required Minimum Distribution, is the minimum amount that a retirement account owner must withdraw from their account each year once they attain RMD age. For 2025, the IRS has set the RMD age to 73. Unlike IRA accounts, in a retirement plan an employee may delay starting distributions beyond age 73 if they are still working for the company.

The amount of the RMD is calculated based on the account balance from the end of the previous year, and the account holder's life expectancy, as determined by IRS tables.

Failing to take an RMD can result in a hefty penalty for the participant. We will initiate RMDs each year according to the information we have on file for your employees. Please reach out to your Plan Consultant if you feel there is a participant in your plan that may qualify for an RMD.

Documents with confidential information (Social Security Numbers, Dates of Birth, banking information, etc.) should never be sent via email, even if sent "securely." Please login to the PlanSponsorLink(PSL) and upload your file to us via the Secure File Exchange.

Yes. It is our job to assist you in determining who is eligible to participate in the plan. We also need this information to properly test your plan for compliance and complete your annual Form 5500.

Employer Contributions (excluding required Safe Harbor Contributions) should not be deposited to the plan until after the end of the plan year. Many plans have a year-end employment and/or a 1,000-hour requirement to share in the allocation of profit-sharing contributions. Your plan also may have specific allocation formulas. Since you will not know who will meet all the requirements until the last day of the plan year, you should not "pre-fund" any profit-sharing contribution. If you want to accumulate the profit-sharing contribution throughout the year, you can open a separate corporate account just for this purpose, then after the profit-sharing allocation is determined you can transfer the funds over to the plan account.

ERISA requires that if you have a defined contribution retirement plan that the fiduciaries (i.e. anyone who has some discretionary authority or control over the plan and its assets) purchase a bond for at least ten percent (10%) of the plan's assets. The Plan is valued at the beginning of each plan year to set the coverage amount needed for the bond. The minimum bond coverage requirement is $1,000.

If you sign up for our 3(16) Fiduciary Essentials + package, part of that service includes The TPA Experts purchasing and managing the Fidelity Bond for your plan. You can read more about the 3(16) Fiduciary Essentials + service on our Fiduciary Services Page.

The best place to find distribution and loan forms is on your plan's recordkeeper website. Please note, some recordkeepers are moving away from paper forms and require participant to initiate loans and distribution requests online through the recordkeeper websites.

Beneficiary forms are used to direct the distribution of plan assets upon a participant's death, regardless of the terms of a participant's will. In the event of an employee's death, we will need a copy of the participant's beneficiary form in order to process the death distribution.

Ideally, when an employee signs up for the plan, they should complete the beneficiary form at that time. Your recordkeeper can provide a beneficiary form specific to the retirement plan, and often times beneficiary information can be maintained and updated by the participant through the recordkeeper's website.

The Plan Sponsor's HR department should keep all signed beneficiary forms in their files.

We suggest that the Beneficiary forms are updated by participants every two years.

IRS discrimination testing divides employees into three groups by hours - those that worked 1,000 or more hours in a year; those that worked 500-999 hours in a year; and those that worked less than 500 hours in a year. By providing actual hours to put employees in their proper group, we can determine whether they accrue a benefit and/or vesting for that year.

The SECURE 2.0 Act is a federal law passed in late 2022 designed to encourage employees to save for retirement. The law includes a number of provisions that impact retirement plans, including Catch up Contributions; new Required Minimum Distribution rules; new Long term, Part-time employee eligibility rules; Student loan payments Employer Match; 529 Plan Conversions. To read more about Secure 2.0, we created this Secure 2.0 Basics Info Sheet.

We must determine if your plan is part of a controlled group of companies. IRS regulations require that all employees of a controlled group must be tested together for discrimination purposes.

If during a plan year, there are a significant number of participants whose employment is involuntarily terminated it could be deemed that the plan incurred a partial termination. If that occurs, all employees who terminated during the plan year (whether voluntarily or involuntarily) in which the partial termination occurred must become fully vested in their accounts. Please let us know if this situation might apply to those who terminated.

Please Note: The partial plan termination determination is not affected by employees who voluntarily terminate if documentation is on file that supports their voluntary resignation. Therefore, The TPA Experts recommends that you obtain written notification from employees who voluntarily terminate so that they are not counted in making this determination.

Please contact your The TPA Experts' plan consultant or use our Contact Us form. Plan amendments have various requirements and timing deadlines depending on the nature of the change, so it is important that our team assist you.

To be eligible, the business must meet 3 requirements:

• Have 100 or fewer employees who were paid at least $5,000 in compensation by you in the preceding year.
• Cover at least one non-HCE with your retirement plan; and
• In the three tax years before the first year you're eligible for the credit, your employees were not substantially the same employees who received contributions or accrued benefits in another retirement plan sponsored by you, a member of a controlled group that includes you, or a predecessor of either.

Created in SECURE 1.0 and enhanced in SECURE 2.0, an eligible employer may claim up to 100% of its qualified start-up costs for adopting and maintaining a new 401(k) plan.

An eligible business may receive a tax credit for employer contributions provided by small businesses over the first few years of the 401(k) plan. The maximum limit is $1,000 per eligible employee per year. An eligible employee is paid no more than $100,000 a year (adjusted for inflation). The exact tax credit depends upon the number of employees and the number of years since the plan's start-up.

Small businesses are eligible for a $500 tax credit by adding an automatic enrollment feature to a new or existing 401(k) plan. To be eligible, the auto-enrollment feature must meet Eligible Automatic Contribution Arrangement (EACA) requirements.

Plans must be tested each year to ensure that they are compliant with the laws governing retirement plans. The bulk of testing is to ensure non-highly compensated employees (NHCEs) are benefiting as compared to the Highly compensated employees (HCEs) in the plan.

To retain their tax-qualified status, 401(k) plans must undergo extensive testing each year to prove they don't discriminate in favor of Highly Compensated Employees (HCEs). One of these tests is the IRC section 410(b) "coverage" test. The purpose of this test is to ensure a 401(k) plan covers a sufficient number of Non-Highly Compensated Employees (NHCEs).