Between tax reform, healthcare regulations, and who knows what else, business owners have a lot to focus on right now. So when it comes to keeping tabs on your company’s retirement plan statistics, you might feel like your attention would be better spent elsewhere – but be careful! Before you know it, the number of participants on your company’s retirement plan could cause you to trigger a plan audit, which can have a number of (potentially expensive) ramifications.

Joining us on this episode of unsuitable is Kim Veal, a member of Rea’s Retirement Plan audit team, who will teach us how to identify retirement plan participants, what the retirement plan audit “magic number” is, and what to do once you hit that magic number.

The Retirement Plan Participants Magic Number

If you have over 100 retirement plan participants, your organization will most likely require a plan audit. In the context of retirement plans, “participants” is a very general term. It includes anybody who is eligible for the plan, not just those actively participating. In the future, this rule is likely to change so that it is only those employees who are actively participating, but at the same time more people are likely to start participating if the stock market continues to improve – so you’ll need continue paying attention to this number over the coming months and years.

If you have employees, you will be interested in these topics discussed in this episode:

• Penalties for ERISA compliance violations.
• What exactly the “magic number” for a retirement plan audit is and what this means to you.
• How to select the best auditor for the job.

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