Employee Benefits Plans

At Thompson, Greenspon & Co., we work with companies across the Washington D.C. metropolitan area to serve their employee benefit & pension plan needs. Our services include benefit plan/401(k) audits, employee benefit plan consulting, establishing new plans and analysis of tax implications on various types of plan options. Our team of employee plan auditor specialists has worked with over 30 benefit plan audits and collectively possesses 75 years of experience.

T&G is a member of The American Institute of CPAs Employee Benefit Plan Audit Quality Center (EBPAQC), which is a firm-based voluntary membership center for firms that audit employee benefit plans. As a member of the EBPAQC we must adhere to the following guidelines: 

• Designating a partner responsible for our employee benefit plan audit practice
• Establishing quality control programs
• Performing annual internal inspections
• Making our peer review report findings publicly available

ERISA Audits: What are the risks?

• An assessment issued by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) regarding the level and quality of audit work performed by independent qualified public accountants with respect to financial statement audits of employee benefit plans covered under the ERISA disclosed the following:
  • 19% of audits failed to comply with one or more established professional standards
  • 33% failed to comply with one or more of ERISA's reporting and disclosure requirements
• Impact on plan sponsors could mean risking penalties imposed by DOL who file 5500’s with deficient audit reports
• Many audit failures relate to tax and compliance issues, which we feel our Employee Benefits Group would substantially help mitigate these risks  

Selected links:           

• U.S. Department of Labor:   Employee Benefits Security Administration:
  http://www.dol.gov/ebsa/
• U.S. Department of Labor:  Selecting an Auditor Brochure:  
  http://www.dol.gov/ebsa/pdf/selectinganauditor.pdf
• AICPA Employee Benefit Plan Quality Center:  
  http://ebpaqc.aicpa.org/
• AICPA EBPQC Membership Requirements:  http://ebpaqc.aicpa.org/Memberships/Membership+Requirements.htm