Spring is finally here and that means it’s time to enjoy the outdoors. Perhaps. According to Quarles & Brady partners Marla Anderson and Amy Ciepluch and associate Alyssa Dowse, spring is also the time when “self-audits” of retirement and health plans should be done to ensure compliance with Internal Revenue Service and Department of Labor rules.
The attorneys say self-audits give a company the chance to find and fix compliance issues in advance, generally resulting in less intensive audits by the agencies, as well as more forgiving and less expensive correction programs.
While the actual retirement or health plan documents and records are very important, they say the IRS and DOL are expanding their focus to the people behind the plans by looking closely at internal controls in plan operations on the IRS side and fiduciary training on the DOL side.
