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Compliance December 7, 2015
Form 5500 Deadline Extension Repealed
A provision in a new law will return Form 5500 deadlines to what they were before the Surface Transportation and Veterans Health Care Choice Improvement Act was passed.
Reported by PLANSPONSOR staff
Tucked inside the newly passed Fixing America’s Surface Transportation (FAST) Act of 2015 is a provision setting the deadline for Form 5500 filing extensions back to two and one-half months after the original filing deadline.
The Surface Transportation and Veterans Health Care Choice Improvement Act of 2015, signed by President Obama on July 31, 2015, extended the due date to three and one-half months after the filing deadline, or November 15. The new bill repeals this extension; for calendar-year plans this means the deadline for filing an extension, if requested, is October 15.
Phyllis C. Borzi, assistant secretary of labor for the Department of Labor’s (DOL) Employee Benefit Security Administration (EBSA), had said she would urge Congress to repeal the deadline extension. She explained that the bill extended the deadline for filing with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), but not the DOL. “We felt blindsided by this, and we think it was a move in the wrong direction, especially since the Government Accountability Office and Office of Inspector General have asked us to get the information sooner,” Borzi said.