Home > Tools > U.S. Government Forms Extract

U.S. Government Forms Extract

U.S. qualified mode

The U.S. Government Forms Extract command saves Valuation Set results to an XML file, to be used to complete the Internal Revenue Service Form 5500 Schedule SB, Schedule MB, Schedule B and the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation Comprehensive Premium Filing form. These results can then be imported into the Relius Government Forms 5500 software application. Of course, within Relius you must still enter any information not available from ProVal, such as the name of the plan sponsor and the Employer Identification Number (EIN), as well as values of items that ProVal does not export (such as the outstanding balance of a funding waiver base for a multiemployer plan, the amount of a waiver amortization installment for a single-employer plan under PPA funding rules and, also under PPA funding rules, whether there has been a change in method or in non-prescribed actuarial assumptions).

For official guidance, and to determine the appropriate ProVal parameter settings, refer to the instructions published by the IRS and the PBGC.

 

Exporting values from ProVal

Select (from the drop-down list of all Valuation Sets that have been executed and saved in the current Project) the Valuation Set that contains the output values you wish to export for use as entries on the government form(s).

If the Asset & Funding Policy law type referenced by the Valuation Set is “pre-PPA”, “Pre-PPA and PPA” or “Multiemployer” and the Asset & Funding Policy Rounding parameter value is set to "<None>", ProVal will re-execute the Valuation Set with a Rounding parameter value of "$1". This avoids the situation where a value ProVal exported is a dollar off from the result produced by the form’s arithmetic (as indicated in the line item instructions). If the degree of rounding is set to $100, $1,000 or $1,000,000, however, ProVal will not re-execute based on $1 rounding, so you should create another Asset & Funding Policy, with $1 rounding selected, to produce another Valuation Set run for extract.

If the Asset & Funding Policy referenced by the Valuation Set has a law type of “PPA”, the $1 rounding policy mentioned above for the other law types does not apply (in order to avoid a difference, because of rounding, in the amount of any discounted contribution computed under the Valuation Set Exhibits command). However, for this law type, the Asset & Funding Policy Rounding parameter value should not have been set to "<None>" anyway – because, in order to have certain ratios and percentages truncated if required by the Schedule SB instructions, $1 rounding should be selected.

Next select the Forms for which you wish to export the pertinent Valuation Set results. The accessibility of the options depends on the Asset & Funding Policy law selection underlying the Valuation Set:

Note that the Comprehensive Premium Filing cannot be selected if an IRS Schedule box is checked, because the pertinent liabilities are determined as of different dates and hence cannot be derived from a single Valuation Set. More specifically, benefit values for the IRS Schedules are determined as of the first day of the plan year preceding the premium payment year, whereas Comprehensive Premium Filing values generally are determined as of the last day of that same plan year. Regardless of the Schedule that you import into, values exported from the Valuation Set are all based on just one Valuation Date (indicated by the Asset & Funding Policy).

For completion of Schedules SB, MB or B, you may need to modify the Contribution Schedule parameters of the Contribution Policy topic of the Asset & Funding Policy referenced by the Valuation Set. Although an earlier Valuation Set run, to derive the amount of the minimum required contribution, may not have reflected any actual contribution information, now you must provide it, including dates of payment. Therefore, you need to create another Asset & Funding Policy, to produce another Valuation Set run for extract. Under the Contribution Policy topic, check the Reflect contribution schedule box and (in the Contribution Schedule dialog box) enter all contributions made for the current plan year within the time period allowed for inclusion in the current plan year Schedule SB, MB or B and all relevant prior plan year contributions made during the current plan year. Enter the Schedule date. Note that:

For the parameter XML file name (for import into Relius Government Forms), enter the name of the XML file (in the client directory) in which you wish to save results from the extract command. The file name must have the extension “.xml”. Instead of manually entering a file name, you may click the Browse button to select an existing directory (or folder) and/or XML file. If the file is not to be in the client directory, the full path and name is entered and displayed.

Click Run to execute the Valuation Set and save the pertinent results in the specified XML file. Various warnings and attachments may be issued, including (for Schedule SB, MB and/or B processing) a Schedule of Active Participant Data, the development of the equivalent level annual rate of salary increase and the development of the weighted average interest rate, if needed.

Once the export is complete, follow the instructions below to import the results into Relius Government Forms 5500.

 

Importing values into Relius Government Forms 5500

To enter the saved values into an IRS Schedule or a PBGC premium form, open the Relius Government Forms 5500 software and select the desired form. Before importing from the XML file, consider how you wish to set two of Relius’s options:

Error Checks will also alert you to fill in items with missing values, such as name of plan sponsor, waiver information and a change in either method or non-prescribed actuarial assumptions. In particular, for the IRS Schedule, ProVal might not have exported a value to answer the question about attaching a Schedule of Active Participant Data: unless no actives have been processed, if the Valuation Set contains Valuations for which no PBGC liability was calculated, then ProVal cannot be sure of whether the plan is covered by PBGC insurance (and the Schedule of Active Participant Data should then be attached).

After setting the desired Relius options, on the Utilities menu, click the XML Import command and select the XML file that ProVal created. To complete the import process, answer the Relius prompts/questions that follow. It is recommended that you select Replace, rather than Overlay, to be sure all of ProVal’s exported values appear on the corresponding lines of the Schedule or premium form. (Thus you would export values from ProVal first and then add or modify individual line item entries.) Our reasons for this recommendation are based on ProVal’s export procedure:

  1. If ProVal computes line items that can be calculated from other line items on the Schedule or premium form, such as some totals and, for example, the amount of a full funding limitation credit in the funding standard account of Schedule MB, then these values are available for export and hence saved to the XML file. Items entered as parameters, for completion of the Valuation Set and underlying Valuation(s), are also available for export – for example, the amount of the Reconciliation Account Balance in the funding standard account, entered under the Initial Asset Values topic of the Asset & Funding Policy, although the Schedule MB line items comprising this total are not available to ProVal.

  2. Items not calculated by, or not available to, ProVal, however, cannot be exported and therefore will not be saved to the XML file. Thus the import process should leave the corresponding line items of the Schedule or premium form unchanged from their pre-import values. If, for example, the plan number has already been filled in, it will be untouched by the import process. Similarly, if “other credits” to the funding standard account (Schedule MB) has not yet been completed, it will remain blank.

  3. Note that there are some line items for which ProVal exports a blank value and this treatment is not the same as not exporting. For example, if the (Schedule MB) actuarial cost method is a spread gain type, then a blank is exported for the accrued liability for plans using immediate gain methods.

Please review all line items carefully. In particular, please note:

  1. As previously mentioned, ProVal does not export, or does not always export, a value for certain questions, including whether a Schedule of Active Participant Data is attached or (Schedule SB) whether there has been a change in method or non-prescribed actuarial assumptions, and there are values ProVal has no information about, including waivers, or cannot determine a definitive answer for. As an example of the last situation, for Schedule B, ProVal cannot distinguish between plans for which no salary increase is assumed (although the plan’s benefit formula might be salary-related) and plans for which no salary increase applies (that is, plan benefits are not salary-related), because a zero assumed salary increase is entered in the Valuation Assumptions in both situations. If plan benefits are not salary-related, then, presumably, you would check the “N/A” box for the salary increase assumption line item. However (again presumably), you would not check the “N/A” box if plan benefits are salary related but you assume level salaries in the future.

  2. Another reason for a careful review of all line items is that you may wish to change a numerical value ProVal has exported, for instance, the interest credited on employer contributions if your methodology for computing interest is not the same as ProVal’s. (ProVal computes compound interest, reflecting the actual number of days from payment date to the end of the plan year or, under PPA funding rules, a later payment date. See the Technical Reference article entitled Interest on Expected Employer Contributions for details.)

Relius Government Forms 5500 is a SunGard product. See www.relius.net for more information.