401k Plan
401k Rules
Chapter 2:
Your Right to Plan Information
This chapter outlines the disclosure requirements of retirement plans. It
describes the documents that a plan administrator must make available to you,
the information these documents should contain, and alternative sources for the
information.
These questions are addressed:
What information
is your plan required to disclose?
What
documents are available from other Federal agencies?
ERISA requires plan administrators the people who run plans to give you in
writing the most important facts you need to know about your retirement plan.
Some of these facts must be provided to you regularly and automatically by the
plan administrator. Others are available upon request, free-of-charge, or for
copying fees. Your request should be made in writing.
One of the most important documents you are entitled to receive is a summary
of the plan called the summary plan description, or SPD. Your plan administrator
is legally obligated to provide to you, free of charge, the SPD automatically
when you become a participant of an ERISA-covered retirement plan or a
beneficiary receiving benefits under such a plan . The summary plan description
is an important document that tells you what the plan provides and how it
operates. It tells you when you begin to participate in the plan, how your
service and benefits are calculated, when your benefit becomes vested, when you
will receive payment and in what form, and how to file a claim for benefits. You
should read your summary plan description to learn about the particular
provisions that apply to you. If a plan is changed you must be informed, either
through a revised summary plan description, or in a separate document, called a
summary of material modifications, which also must be given to you free of
charge.
In addition to the summary plan description, the plan administrator must
automatically give you each year a copy of the plan's summary annual report.
This is a summary of the annual financial report that most retirement plans must
file with the Department of Labor. These reports are filed on government forms
called Form 5500. The summary annual report is available to you at no cost. To
learn more about your plan's assets, you may ask the plan administrator for a
copy of the annual report in its entirety.
If you are unable to get the summary plan description, the summary annual
report, or the annual report from the plan administrator, you may be able to
obtain a copy by writing to the Department of Labor, Employee Benefits Security
Administration (EBSA), Public Disclosure Room, Room N-1513, 200 Constitution
Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20210, for a nominal copying charge. To help
locate your plan documents, please provide enough information to assist EBSA in
identifying the document, such as the name of the plan and city and state in
which it is located, as relevant to the document.*
If you have information that plan assets are being mismanaged or misused,
call EBSA's toll free number at 1-866-444-EBSA and ask to speak with a regional
office representative near you, or view a list of regional offices at
www.dol.gov/ebsa
On the following page is a list and description of
the documents that must be made available to you. If a plan
administrator refuses to comply with your request for documents, and
the reasons are within his or her control, a court may impose a
penalty of up to $110 per day. The Department of Labor does not have
the authority to impose this penalty.
Documents for some plans are available for public inspection at the Internal
Revenue Service. These documents include the applications filed by retirement
plans to determine if they meet Federal tax-qualification requirements,
applications filed by certain organizations to determine if they qualify as
tax-exempt, and the Internal Revenue Service responses to these applications.
Get in touch with the Internal Revenue Service Public Access Reading Room, P.O.
Box 795, Ben Franklin Station, Washington, D.C. 20044, telephone: 202-622-5164,
for information on available documents.
If you terminate employment and you have a vested retirement benefit that you
are not eligible to receive until later, that information will be reported by
your plan to the Internal Revenue Service, which, in turn, will inform the
Social Security Administration (SSA). This information must also be provided to
you by the plan. The Social Security Administration will tell you, upon request,
whether you were reported as having a deferred vested benefit under any plan.
For information about making these requests, call 1-800-772-1213 (toll-free).
SSA will automatically give you this information when you apply for social
security benefits. Nevertheless, it is in your interest to keep the plan
administrator informed about any change of address or name change after you
leave employment to assure that you will receive the retirement benefit due to
you.
Source: Department of Labor
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