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Compliance September 6, 2018
PBGC Makes Available 2018 Premium Filing Instructions
The PBGC expanded the examples about how to determine premiums in a year when a plan is involved with a spinoff, merger or consolidation, and it expanded the section about short plan years to provide additional information for plans expecting to distribute assets during the 2018 plan year pursuant to a standard termination.
Reported by Rebecca Moore
The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation’s (PBGC)’s Comprehensive Premium Filing Instructions for 2018 Plan Years is available on PBGC’s website.
The agency notes that the filing requirements for 2018 are almost identical to the filing requirements for 2017. However, key changes to note for 2018 include:
- Single-employer premium rates: The flat-rate premium is $74 per-participant, up from $69; the variable-rate premium is $38 per $1,000 of unfunded vested benefits capped at $523 times the number of participants, up from $34 capped at $517 times the number of participants.
- The flat-rate premium for multiemployer plans remains at $28 per-participant.
- Expanded description of the variable-rate premium exemption for plans closing out during the year to clarify when the exemption applies.
In addition, the PBGC expanded the examples about how to determine premiums in a year when a plan is involved with a spinoff, merger or consolidation, and it expanded the section about short plan years to provide additional information for plans expecting to distribute assets during the 2018 plan year pursuant to a standard termination.
The agency also added a list of common filing errors and provided details about those errors in a new Appendix. Common filing errors identified include:
- Incorrect Identifying Information;
- Sending Payment without Properly Identifying Plan;
- New Plans Failing to do a First Year Filing; and
- Small Plan Lookback Rule Inconsistencies.