Third-party administration · Santa Fe, New Mexico
Move part of your tax bill into a retirement plan for you and your employees. We design the plan, write the document, run the annual compliance work, and file the returns — for the life of the plan.
Two credentialed partners do that work themselves. There is no call center and no account-management layer between you and the person who designed your plan.
A retirement plan moves dollars that would go to the IRS into accounts for you and your staff, through deductions and, for a new plan, credits.
Documents, testing, filings, and participant notices stay current, and the person who designed the plan is the person who answers the phone.
Employees save out of their own paycheck, pre-tax or Roth, and take the account with them. Good benefits keep good people.
In a bundled arrangement, one national provider or payroll company does all four, and the plan sponsor becomes a ticket number. We work unbundled: alongside the advisor and custodian you already have, or ones you choose.
The whole administrative side of a qualified retirement plan, from the first design conversation through the eventual termination or transfer.
Cross-tested and combination designs that let owners and key employees receive substantially larger allocations than a standard profit sharing formula allows, where the demographics support it. This is the work a bundled provider pushes away, and it is our specialty. Cash balance plans are designed in coordination with an enrolled actuary.
We do not require plan sponsors to switch advisors or move recordkeeping platforms to work with us. Our TPA services are built to integrate with the team you already have. Bundled providers ask you to consolidate under their roof. We do not.
Design consulting and illustrations up front. Then the plan document, adoption agreement, amendments, restatements, Summary Plan Description, and the participant notices the plan owes its employees.
Nondiscrimination and coverage testing, top-heavy determination, contribution limit testing, allocation of employer contributions, trust accounting and reconciliation, and participant statements.
Form 5500 series preparation and filing, Form 8955-SSA, the related schedules, and coordination with the plan's auditor when the plan is large enough to need one.
Distributions, rollovers, required minimum distributions, participant loans, QDRO processing, and plan terminations.
Taking plans over from other providers, including inherited problems, and correcting operational failures through the IRS correction programs — Self-Correction, the Voluntary Correction Program, and Audit CAP where it applies.
Teaching the employer and the employees how the plan actually works and what it is worth to them. Owners get a plan they can explain; employees get someone who will answer the question they were too embarrassed to ask.
Plans are complex and meticulous. Your provider should still make them feel simple. We have sacrificed scalability in the name of quality, so that the service stays mindful — the complexity is ours to absorb, not yours to manage.
That is why the relationship is continuous rather than transactional. We are in it from the first conversation to the day the plan closes, and the same two people know your plan the whole way through.
We design plans to work around your business and its goals — not the other way around. Before you see a recommendation, we build the design around your timeline, structure, and objectives, rather than fitting you into a pre-set menu of options.
The plan document and adoption agreement are drafted around how your business really pays people, and the plan is set up with your advisor and custodian.
Every year: testing, allocations, trust accounting, participant statements, the Form 5500, and the notices the plan owes its employees.
Amendments and restatements as the rules change, and corrections through the IRS programs when something has gone wrong — including before we got here.
Terminations and transfers handled properly, so the last year of a plan is as clean as the first.
Small to mid-sized employers, often closely held or professional practices, who want to cut this year's tax liability, put away as much as the rules allow for the owner, and offer a benefit that keeps good employees.
Usually the real question is whether the plan you already have is being handled correctly.
Advisors who manage the plan's assets and would rather not own the compliance. We are the unbundled TPA behind you, working with your custodian and your recordkeeper.
We stay in our lane. We do not select, recommend, or monitor investments, and we do not compete for your relationship.
Referring a client who needs a plan for deduction or deferral reasons, or one whose plan turned up a problem at tax time.
Design illustrations you can run the numbers against, and corrections handled through the proper IRS programs.
Employees of the companies we administer, who need a distribution, a loan, a rollover, or an explanation of the statement in front of them.
You get a person, not a queue.
Teaching employers and employees how a plan actually works is part of the job, so here is the short version, free and without a form to fill in first.
This is general information about how retirement plans work. It is not legal or tax advice about your plan.
Two different mechanisms, and they are worth keeping straight. Deductions reduce the income you are taxed on — company contributions to the plan are deductible, which pulls down taxable income and therefore the tax bill.
Credits come off the tax bill itself, dollar for dollar, and are available to employers starting a new plan. A design conversation should show you both, in numbers, before you commit to anything.
Pre-tax reduces what you are taxed on now. You pay no tax on what you save today, and you pay tax on the money when you take it out in retirement.
Roth is the mirror image. You pay tax on the money you save now, and you take it out tax free in retirement. Most plans can offer both and let each employee choose.
Coordination and planning first: what the company wants the plan to do, and what it can commit to. Those decisions get written into a legal plan document, which is what the plan actually runs on.
Then a trust, a recordkeeper, and an investment provider are selected, and the plan opens. A plan can generally be in place in well under an hour of the owner's time, because the drafting is our job, not yours.
Day-to-day administration and annual reporting are what keep a plan legal and functioning: eligibility and enrollment, contribution processing, compliance testing, participant statements, and the Form 5500.
This is the part most advisors, CPAs, and business owners bring a third-party administrator in to handle. It is the whole of what we do.
A safe harbor design commits the company to a guaranteed contribution — one of three match formulas, or 3% of pay for every eligible employee. In exchange, the plan skips most annual testing, and owners and management get more room to defer.
A non-safe harbor design leaves the company free to decide each year what, if anything, it contributes. The trade is extra testing, extra processing, and more deadlines. Which one fits is a function of your payroll and your goals, not a preference.
A new comparability design lets the company make customized contributions by cross-testing them — an age-weighted allocation that measures dollars contributed today against what those dollars are worth at retirement.
In a typical illustration, an entry-level employee at age 20 might receive 5% of pay, a mid-level employee at 40 might receive 15%, and an owner at 60 might receive 25%. This is for illustration only and results vary with your actual demographics; whether a design passes testing depends entirely on your census.
The IRS and the Department of Labor set the rules for how retirement plans run, and those rules exist to protect employee benefits.
Savings come out of the paycheck, along with any company contribution. The trust holds and manages the investment accounts, separate from the company's own assets.
And it is the employee's money to take with them when they leave, subject to the plan's vesting schedule on employer contributions.
True 401k is deliberately a micro firm. Both partners lead every relationship and perform the technical work, which is why there is no call center, no account-management layer, and no volume model. We chose depth over scale.
“We build the best retirement plans, not the most.”
“The mission is to hold our client's hand through the life of their plan.”
QKA (Qualified 401(k) Administrator) and QPA (Qualified Pension Administrator) are individual credentials from the American Retirement Association and ASPPA. They belong to the partners personally — a firm cannot hold them.
Two credentialed partners do the work. You are not handed to a service tier.
New comparability and cash balance designs that bundled providers push away.
Stack on top of your current plan for more options with your retirement plan.
Including fixing what the last provider got wrong, through the proper correction programs.
We work directly with your advisor, CPA, actuary, and ERISA counsel rather than around them.
Priced by what the plan actually needs, and stated plainly rather than buried.
Worth being direct about, because it decides who else you need at the table.
Tell us about the business and what you are trying to do. Starting a plan, moving one, or trying to work out whether the plan you have is being handled correctly — the first call is with a partner either way, and it costs nothing to find out.
