403b Resource Bank for Employers

To help you maintain compliance with IRS 403b plan regulations, please take note of the following plan updates and reminders. For more program information, visit the RIC website for ERE.

Employer Responsibility

403b Contributions

You must ensure that each participant's payroll deductions do not exceed the maximum limits.

• Please review all 2024 deductions for employees who contribute at high levels to make sure no one went over the limit. If anyone did, please contact RIC right away so we can have excess contributions removed from the plan. This needs to be done asap. (See the RIC website for more information)
• Beginning in 2026, employers must process 457 Age 50+ Catch-up contributions as Roth for participants earning over $145,000 in the tax year. Any person in this group may contribute on a pretax basis up to the regular limit. Any contributions over the regular limit must be made on a Roth basis. If you do not offer the 457 Roth option and have questions about adding it, contact RIC.

2026 ROTH Change

As previously mentioned, there is a new law taking effect January 1, 2026.  This law applies to anyone turning age 50 or older in 2026 whose 2025 FICA wages exceed $145,000 (this amount will be indexed in the future). Any person in this group may contribute on a pretax basis up to the regular limit.  Any contributions over the regular limit must be made on a Roth basis.

Example:

Employee Smith is over 50 and made over $145,000 in FICA wages in 2025.  In 2026, Smith can contribute $23,500* on a pretax basis.  Once this limit is reached, you must change the deduction from pretax to Roth. Make sure you change the coding on your remitter file from EE to RT.

We will be modifying our plan document to provide a “deemed Roth” provision, allowing employers to change the deductions without employee consent to meet the federal requirements. We will also add language to the Salary Reduction Form so employees are aware of this provision.

Reminder of Your To-Do’s: 

1. If you haven’t already done so, add Roth deductions as an option in your payroll system as of 1/1/2026. We recommend you make this change prior to 2026 so your payroll system is ready.
2. Test your payroll system to see if your software is built to automatically change the election.
3. If your payroll system will not make this change, you will need to monitor contributions for anyone meeting the Roth requirement. Once the person reaches the maximum, make sure you change the election to Roth. This may mean some employees will have a split deduction in one pay period - $X pretax and $Y Roth.

*For purposes of this article, we will assume the regular limit in 2026 is $23,500 (same as 2025).

Remitter File Revisions

•   For those of you who use Voya’s Common Remitter service to send contributions, Voya will be adding new optional fields to the contribution remitter file. Although optional, we encourage you to add them to your contribution remittance file. These fields will allow providers to open default accounts if they receive contributions for anyone who hasn’t opened an account yet.  The fields will also ensure that providers have a participant’s current address. Once you have a test file ready, please email common.remitter@voya.com and they will send you a secure email you can use to submit a test. 

PLANWITHEASE

There is some confusion between planwithease and Voya, the investment provider. They are separate entities within the larger Voya umbrella.  If you have any questions for planwithease, please email them at customerservice@planwithease.com or call them at (866) 499-3273. If employees or former employees have questions regarding access to planwithease, they can reach them at (855) 464-6928.

PLANWITHEASE REPORTS

What to do with planwithease reports:

• CLM Summary – this report shows projected participants who will over-contribute.  It is very important to review these reports to see if anyone will exceed the federal maximum.
• IP Data with No Demographic Match – this report shows names of employees/former employees who have accounts with the corresponding provider.  Names on the reports have not been loaded into pwe by your employer, so there is no place for the provider data to load. Please review the information and load the participants into pwe.  If you have no record of the employee, please email ric@iowa.gov and we will look into the situation.
• Age 73, Approved Hardships, Defaulted Loans, Loans Processed, Plan Assets, and Transaction Summary - no action needed.  These reports are for your information.

Universal Availability Notice (UAN)

The 2025 Universal Availability Notice (UAN) is now available. Please ensure that all eligible employees receive the required UAN annually, as mandated by federal law, and that eligible new employees receive it upon hire. The UAN should be placed on your letterhead. If you also offer the 457/401a plans, you may include the optional sentence. While we recommend distributing the annual notice with the W-2 documents, it can be provided at any time. Be sure to document how the notices are distributed in case of an IRS audit.

Ongoing Activities

Please remember to perform the following activities:

• Send all RIC Account Forms to RIC at 515-281-5102 (fax) or ric@iowa.gov.
• If a RIC participant leaves employment, email the term date to ric@iowa.gov.
• Notify the RIC Team of name or address changes for RIC participants.
• Give the RIC At-A-Glance (found on your RIC page) to all new hires for their review.

A Fresh New Look! 

We’ve redesigned all Employer Plan Details pages with a clean, modern layout. Check out the new streamlined experience for your participants/agents!

Questions?

RIC wants to hear from you! Please email the RIC Team to submit your questions. We will respond to you directly and if the subject of discussion is beneficial for all employers, we will share the answers in our next RIC Resource Bank.

To request earlier published editions of the 403b Resource Bank, please email RIC.