Is it Manpower Shortage, Intrusiveness – or Both – Behind New Form 5500-SUP?

Beyond the divisiveness and unwillingness to compromise that seem to have infected many of our lawmakers in Washington, D.C., there is also a growing distrust of some government agencies.  Actually, this distrust is encountered from Pennsylvania Avenue to Main Street, USA, and includes agencies and personnel responsible for implementing our laws and the regulations that spring from them. 

While the U.S. Department of Labor has recently been targeted for its proposed fiduciary regulations, the most consistently criticized and attacked government agency has undoubtedly been the Internal Revenue Service.  Some of the animosity comes from lawmakers’ dislike for the complex Internal Revenue Code, which – they may be forgetting – is a creature of the Congress itself. 

Being the police force tasked with enforcing this Code has made the IRS an available and visible target, including for grandstanding politicians wanting to score points with their constituents.  It seems that in every Congressional biennium some lawmaker proposes legislation to eliminate the IRS altogether.  While such proposals are rarely taken seriously, and there are functions performed by the IRS that are vital, the proposals are an indication of how disliked the IRS is.

The IRS didn’t do itself any public relations favors when some of its staffers allegedly targeted for special scrutiny a number of conservative groups seeking nonprofit status, a controversy that is still being played out.  However limited, or extensive, such practices might actually have been, given the hostility some politicians have for the IRS it was like pouring gasoline on a fire. 

Realistically, politicians’ attitudes do matter, because one way they can attack the IRS is by cutting the agency’s funding.  One can argue endlessly over whether the IRS or other federal agencies spend their taxpayer-funded annual budgets wisely.  But stagnating IRS funding has led to the loss of about 8,000 of its employees since 2010, this at a time when responding to landmark court decisions and complicated legislation – like the Affordable Care Act – is placing even greater demands on the agency.

Cuts in IRS funding have left fewer field staff available to perform audits of individual taxpayers, businesses, and retirement plans.  It has been estimated that there is now less than a 1% probability that an employer-sponsored retirement plan will be examined.  Another indication of IRS staff resource scarcity is the elimination of most plan determination letter reviews, except in the year of plan establishing and year of termination. 

To make its auditing resources more efficient, the IRS is focusing on plans it believes have the greatest probability of compliance problems.  Such information has come to the IRS in surveys it has conducted, the most high-profile occurring with some 1,200 401(k) plans in 2010.  The IRS sought information on plan design, contributions, nondiscrimination testing, employer demographics, loans, and more.  With a gun to employers’ heads warning of potential audits for non-response, the IRS got the data it wanted.

There is also information contained in Form 5500 filings that identifies plans with 401(k) features, plans with automatic enrollment, with participant-directed accounts, that use a default investment option, etc.  While most Form 5500 filings go to the Department of Labor, it is generally understood that some information is shared between the two enforcement agencies.

The IRS has proposed a way to collect detailed plan-specific compliance data on a regular basis, via new Form 5500-SUP, Annual Return of Employee Benefit Plan Supplemental Information.  A draft of the form was released in March, and the IRS envisions its use for 2015 plan years.   

Many, if not most, feel that the process of plans and service providers gearing up to report this information for the first time could take significantly longer than the 2015 plan year Form 5500 filing deadline, which – for calendar year plans – would be July 31, 2016.  In many cases the information sought is not maintained in a place or format that is readily obtained, especially not capturable or transferable by electronic means.  Given the fact that many plans are presently in the throes of restatement for the Pension Protection Act of 2006 (PPA), the timing for a 2015 Form 5500-SUP is very problematic, at best. 

Some feel that a plan that provides data on its methodology for conducting coverage and nondiscrimination testing, its amending history, opinion or advisory letter information, etc., is making itself an all too convenient target for an IRS audit.  The flip side of the argument  is that the IRS is attempting to do its compliance oversight job with diminishing personnel and budget resources, and that in its design of Form 5500-SUP the Service has taken a logical step in trying to take a more “rifle” – rather than shotgun – approach to monitoring plan compliance.  Reasonable minds may differ!

Ambiguity, however, is not reasonable.  For example, a plan is asked to declare whether it passed 410(b) coverage testing by the ratio percentage test or by the average benefits test.  Eligibility need not be determined by just one or the other across the board; some plans use both.  Another question asks for the date of the most recent “plan amendment/restatement for the required tax law changes.”  Is this question limited to full restatement events only?  Is it intended to capture dates associated with interim amendments?  If interim amendments, the IRS should be providing plans with a list of interim amendments appropriate to the particular year’s Form 5500 filing. 

There are questions on Form 5500-SUP the answers to which will come from other providers, which the preparer may be in no position to authenticate or verify.  Is the preparer potentially on the hook for the work of others over whom it truly had no control?  Mandating that the preparer of the Form 5500-SUP be identified will result in a public record disclosure of the client/preparer relationship; something not required of preparers of Form 5500 itself.   Is this really necessary?  As a matter of public record, I don't believe it is. 

We should probably expect that some level of compliance self-reporting is in all retirement plans’ future.  We are also aware that new procedures have growing pains.  But this initial attempt could and should be improved greatly, both in terms of content and in terms of timing.  

Battle Lines Are Drawn in Fiduciary Regulations Fight

Long ago, in distant elementary and junior high school days, some of the most galvanizing words on the playground or in the neighborhood were heard in the battle cry “Fight…fight..”  Brawls major or minor have always had the power to stir the blood and draw a crowd.  Back then, the motivation was likely to be nothing more serious than someone’s wounded pride, pecking order conflicts, or the mistaken belief that the opposite sex was impressed by such macho behavior. 

Times change, and we hopefully outgrow the need for those juvenile tests of strength and will.  But that doesn’t mean that the appetite for combativeness goes completely away.  It’s a part of everyday life, from the competitiveness of business to the sparring of politics and policy making.  We’ve been treated to a classic demonstration of this combativeness in the aftermath of the Department of Labor’s April release of proposed regulations on – how apropos – “conflicted investment advice,” much better-known as fiduciary definition regulations. 

The avowed intent of these regulations is to assure that those saving for retirement receive investment advice that is in their best interest, not advice biased in some manner that favors the advisor over the saver.  Proponents believe some version of these regulations will do this.  Opponents believe the rules as proposed will result in such advisor anxiety over possible fiduciary liability that smaller investors – particularly IRA investors – will be left without the investment advice they need.

Most of the shots in the minor war that has ensued have been fired from a distance, in newsletters, speeches, editorials and the like.  Some also in Congress, including legislation to halt or defund the regulations, and lawmaker pleas to Secretary of Labor Thomas Perez.  A dramatic exception, perhaps worthy of comparison to a Las Vegas fight card, occurred in a hearing held June 17^th by the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) subcommittee of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. 

That hearing bore the unambiguous title “Restricting Access to Financial Advice: Evaluating the Costs and Consequences for Working Families and Retirees.”  Unambiguous, in that it clearly expressed the organizers’ judgment that unless the proposed regulations are significantly modified, their effect will be to deny many retirement savers the guidance they critically need to prepare for life after their careers.

It might be overstatement to call the hearing and the testimony of lead witness Perez and private sector witnesses a “pitched battle.”  But some who witnessed it have characterized the testimony as intense and spirited.  As one put it, “Secretary Perez vigorously defended the proposal and the need for its adoption.” 

Secretary Perez repeated a previously-presented example of a couple that invested IRA rollover assets in an annuity investment whose fees he characterized as excessive.  He stressed that this was not illegal, because advisors in such circumstances operate under an investment “suitability” standard, rather than a best-interest fiduciary standard.  This the Secretary characterized as “flawed,” expressing his belief that the compensation interests of the advisor are almost inevitably in conflict with the best interests of the investor.

There seemed to be little disagreement on whether the best interest of the retirement saver is the appropriate standard of conduct for those who provide investment advice.  But there was little agreement that the regulatory formula proposed by the DOL can be successfully adapted to the actual investment marketplace, particularly where IRAs are concerned. 

While the proposed regulations allow variable forms of advisor compensation, they do so at the price of a binding contractual relationship – a “best interest contract” – between advisor and client.  That contract was described by Secretary Perez as necessary to enforce a best interest standard.

But a number of witnesses believe that the proposed regulations are unclear in defining just when in the advisor-client relationship this contract would be necessary, and fear that those who do not want to become fiduciaries will stop short of giving savers even basic investment education, to avoid being ensnared in a fiduciary net.    

Secretary Perez expressed his belief that these proposed regulations do a much better job than the long-since-withdrawn 2010 regulations in carving out and allowing advisors to provide investment education without giving themselves fiduciary liability.  But there was significant disagreement from other witnesses, to which Secretary Perez sharply asked for “chapter and verse” language on how they would improve it. 

Witnesses also expressed the belief that the best-interest contract, now commonly referred to as “BIC,” and the education-versus-advice conundrum, together will lead to more litigation in the form of breach-of-contract lawsuits.  To which the Secretary responded that binding arbitration language in the proposed regulations was intended to resolve such conflicts.  Many advisors, however, are unlikely to be cheered by the prospect of arbitration any more than they would welcome litigation.  Both have costs in time, expense, and uncertain outcomes.

As summers always seem to do, this one is flying by.  The deadline for submitting written comments on these proposed regulations, July 21^st, is already upon us.  It’s now less than a month to the public hearing scheduled for August 10^th through 12^th, with an additional day in case it is needed.  Based on the combativeness we have seen so far, it would surprise no one if this bout goes that extra round.