Compliance October 4, 2003

PWBA Returning Five Percent of YR2000 5500s

April 22, 2002 (PLANSPONSOR.com) - The Department of Labor (DoL)'s Pension and Welfare Benefits Administration (PWBA) is unable to process around 5% of the Form 5500 Annual Reports it received for plan year 2000.
Reported by

The PWBA’s new computerized ERISA Filing Acceptance System (EFAST) is not able to file some 50,000 reports, since they were submitted on non-standard forms.

Beginning this week, these filings will be returned unprocessed to filers, accompanied by letters that provide guidance to filers on how to make the necessary corrections. The DoL will give affected filers two months to resubmit their forms on either official government printed forms or those generated by government-approved software.

The 60-day period begins on the date that the non-compliant filings are mailed by back to the filers. A compliant filing that is resubmitted within the 60-day period will be deemed “filed” on the date that the original report was filed.

Filers who do not resubmit their 2000 reports in an acceptable format will be subject to penalties for non-compliance under section 502 (c)(2) of the Employee Retirement Income Security Act (ERISA), the PWBA said.

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