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Employee Benefits/Financial Reporting

Please note: This item is from our archives and was published in 1999. It is provided for historical reference. The content may be out of date and links may no longer function.

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New ED on Benefit Plan Investment Disclosures

The AICPA employee benefit plans committee and AcSEC issued an exposure draft of a proposed statement of position, Accounting for and Reporting of Certain Employee Benefit Plan Investments and Other Disclosure Matters, for public comment. The comment period, which began in mid-May, runs until July 17, 1999.

The proposed SOP amends the AICPA audit and accounting guide, Audits of Employee Benefit Plans; SOP 94-4, Reporting of Investment Contracts Held by Health and Welfare Benefit Plans and Defined-Contribution Plans; and SOP 92-6, Accounting and Reporting by Health and Welfare Benefit Plans. It simplifies the disclosures plans must make for certain investments and also supersedes AICPA Practice Bulletin 12, Reporting Separate Investment Fund Option Information of Defined-Contribution Pension Plans.

When issued in final form, the proposed SOP will affect defined-contribution pension plans as follows. It will

  • Eliminate the disclosures such plans are required to make for participant-directed investment programs.
  • Eliminate the disclosures such plans are required to make to present plan investments by general type in the statement of net assets available for benefits for participant-directed investment options.
  • Require the plans to identify those investments that represent 5% or more of net assets available for nonparticipant-directed benefits.
  • Eliminate the disclosures, by investment fund option, that such plans, as well as health and welfare plans, are required to make relating to benefit-responsive investment contracts.

Copies of the ED can be obtained from the AICPA order department by calling 888-777-7077 and asking for document no. 800129JA. The ED will also be available on the AICPA Web site, www.AICPA.org .

Comments on the ED should be mailed to Wendalyn Frederick, Technical Manager, Professional Standards and Services, File Q511, AICPA, 1455 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Suite 400, Washington, D.C. 20004-1081 so they are received by July 17. Responses may also be sent by e-mail to wfrederick@aicpa.org .