Compliance March 26, 2003

2002 Form 5500 Will Not Require Additional SSA Schedule

March 26, 2003 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - Concerned about the difficulty placed on plan sponsors, the Social Security Administration (SSA) and the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) decided Form 5500 would not require an additional Schedule SSA to report additional participants with vested deferred benefits.
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>The decision came after the two agencies received public comments raising concern that the timing of this requirement would place an undue burden on plan sponsors.   Therefore, the IRS and SSA decided not to reject any filings or to impose penalties for plans that report additional participants in a manner other than with Schedule SSA Page 2.

>The previously released instructions for Form 5500 in 2002 included specific instructions directing filers that attachments to the Schedule SSA must be additional copies of Page 2 when reporting multiple separated participants.   With the recent decision however, for 2002, as in the past, filers can use non-standard attachments to satisfy their Schedule SSA filing requirements.

This change can be found in the Spring 2003 edition of IRS Employee Plans News .   More information on the revision made to Form 5500 for 2002 can be found at www.efast.dol.gov (See PWBA Releases 2002 Form 5500 ).

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