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5500 Preparer's Manual for 2012 Plan Years
The premier resource in the field of Form 5500 preparation, 5500 Preparer's Manual will help you handle the required annual Form 5500 filings for both pension benefits and welfare benefit plans.
The IRS, PBGC, and Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) have released advance informational copies of the 2008 Form 5500 and instructions. Modifications to note are the new Schedules SB and MB, new information required on Schedule R, and short plan year filing provisions.
For the 2008 plan year filings, single-employer and multiple-employer defined benefit plans must now file Schedule SB and multiemployer defined benefit and certain money purchase plans must now file Schedule MB. Schedule B is not acceptable to be filed with a plan’s 2008 Form 5500, and filers cannot use the 2007 Form 5500, including the 2007 Schedule B, to satisfy their 2008 filing requirements.
The Pension Protection Act of 2006 (PPA; P.L. 109-280) requires filers of certain pension plans to provide additional new information beginning with the 2008 plan year. This new information will be filed as attachments to the Schedule R. The plans include all multiemployer defined benefit plans and all defined benefit plans with 1,000 or more participants.
Those plans for which a Schedule SB or Schedule MB and/or an attachment to Schedule R must be filed for 2008 have an automatic extension to file their complete Form 5500 until 90 days after the 2008 forms are available for filing. Welfare plans and pension plans that do not have to file Schedule SB, Schedule MB, or an attachment to Schedule R may still use the 2007 Form 5500 for filing, but they do not have an extension of time to file.
Short 2009 plan year filers whose due date is before January 1, 2010 will have an automatic extension to electronically file their complete 2009 Form 5500 within 90 days after the 2009 filing system is available on the DOL website. The Agencies note that this extension is being given to encourage electronic filing on EFAST2. If these short 2009 plan year filers do not take advantage of the extension, they must use plan year 2008 forms and submit their 2009 filing to EFAST on or before the due date for their short plan year filing.
The PPA requires that the DOL post on its website the actuarial pension funding information filed as part of a defined benefit plan’s Form 5500 annual return/report. This requirement starts with the 2008 Form 5500. The DOL website is located at www.dol.gov/ebsa/actuarialsearch.html, and it can be searched by plan name, employer identification number, plan number, plan year, and type of actuarial schedule. If a plan sponsor of a defined benefit plan (or plan administrators for plan sponsors) maintains an intranet website for communication with employees and not the public, the PPA requires the sponsor (or administrator) to post the plan’s 2008 Form 5500 actuarial information on that intranet website.
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