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United States:
Employee benefit plan filings
The IRS, the Department of Labor and the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation have jointly proposed a substantial revision to the annual report (Form 5500) filed for all employee benefit plans.
The purpose of the revision is to streamline the annual report and reduce the reporting burden. According to government regulators, the new form (reduced from six pages to just one, but with five additional schedules) is intended to:
- eliminate the need to report information that is not useful to enforcement, research or other statutorily mandated missions
- provide plans using simple tax qualification structures and financial operations with streamlined annual reporting requirements
- allow all pension plan filers to report information on coverage requirements for qualified plans in accordance with the three-year non-discrimination testing cycle
- target reporting requirements so that welfare plans generally complete fewer items than pension plans, and small plans complete fewer items than large plans
- establish Form 5500 as the standard reporting format for all so-called 'Direct Filing Entities' eg common/collective trusts, pooled separate accounts and group insurance arrangements
- eliminate redundant items and improve questions that have historically produced filing errors
- reduce costs associated with filing, receiving and processing annual reports and generally speed up and streamline processing both for the government and pension plans.
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