The IRS released Revenue Procedure 2016-51 on September 29, 2016, updating its prior Employee Plans Compliance Resolutions System (EPCRS) correction guidance. Significant changes made to the EPCRS system include:
- Plan sponsors applying under EPCRS to correct a plan document failure will not longer be permitted to include an application for a favorable determination letter with their EPCRS application. This change is to coordinate EPCRS with the recently announced changes to the IRS determination letter program.
- Similarly, individually designed plans using the Self-Correction Program (SCP) to correct significant failures will no longer need to have a current favorable determination letter (since the IRS will no longer issue periodically updated determination letters). Individually designed plans will simply need a favorable determination letter.
- Fees associated with the Voluntary Correction Program (VCP) will now be considered user fees and therefore will no longer be set forth in the EPCRS revenue procedure. For VCP submissions made:
- in 2016, refer to Rev. Proc. 2016-8 and Rev. Proc. 2013-12 to determine the applicable user fee.
- after 2016, refer to the annual Employee Plans user fees revenue procedure to determine VCP user fees for that year.
- The IRS is changing its approach to determining Audit CAP sanctions. A reasonable sanction will no longer be a negotiated percentage of the maximum payment amount (MPA). Instead, it will be based on all of the facts and circumstances, but will generally not be less than the user fee for a VCP application. The MPA is one of the factors they will consider. Others include:
- the type of failure;
- the number and type of employees affected;
- the steps the plan sponsor took to prevent the error and identify it; and
- the extent to which the error has been corrected before discovery.
- The IRS will no longer refund half the paid user fee if there is disagreement over correction in Anonymous Submissions.
The new revenue procedure is effective January 1, 2017. Unlike with prior EPCRS updates, plan sponsors may not elect to voluntarily apply the updated provisions before January 1, 2017.
