Here are some of our most frequently asked questions on retirement plans. We will add more to this section as questions come in.
California employers are required by state law to facilitate CalSavers if they do not offer an employer-sponsored retirement plan and have 5 or more employees.
Your eligibility and compliance deadlines are based on your average employees throughout the year. This number is calculated by averaging the number of employees you reported to the Employment Development Department on your previous four DE9C filings.
Employers with more than:
100 employees must register by Sept. 30, 2020
50 employees must register by June 30, 2021
5 employees must register by June 30, 2022
You may want to look at other employer-sponsored options before registering and beginning to upload employees to CalSavers.
For example, FELS (Farm Employer Labor Service) recently published this information:
The California Farm Bureau Federation (“CFBF”) is working with Nationwide to create a new multiple employer retirement plan (“MEP”) that is available only to employers that are agricultural members of county Farm Bureaus in California, even those that already sponsor a retirement plan. The CFBF-sponsored MEP provides a cost-efficient method to comply with the new law that begins to apply in 2020 to California employers with over 100 employees.
You may also contact the following Nationwide Financial representatives in Private Sector Retirement Plans for more information:
Paul Yossem Aaron Barton
Regional Vice President Regional Internal Consultant
858.997.8863 614.435.4705
Yossem@nationwide.com bartoa6@nationwide.com
FELS: Nationwide Financial Helps CFBF Grow a Retirement Plan for Employees of Farm Bureau Ag Members
The Employee must complete their opt-out form and submit it to the state. After this, if you can void and re-issue the check before remitting your payment for the contribution, then the contribution does not have to be included in the report/paid.
You must submit your payment within 7 days of withholding. If you have submitted the payment, you cannot recoup the money from CalSavers as an employer. The employee would have to submit paperwork to draw the money out of their account.
You are under no obligation to help your employees complete their enrollment/opt-out forms. However, we have heard from many customers that since the state is only providing the initial welcome package in English, they are assisting employees by printing out some of the information in Spanish. It may also help to explain to employees that if they do nothing they will have an automatic deduction.
You can access the forms in other languages by clicking the drop down button below the Register/Login buttons on the CalSavers website:
After an employee opts-out, they will receive a notification confirming their decision. The employee can elect to opt back in through the CalSavers website at any time..
CalSavers removed the Open Enrollment Period from the regulations as of Sep 1.
When an employee stops working, you need to mark that employee as “inactive” on the CalSavers website. If that employee later comes back to work, you must mark their status as “active” (instead of re-uploading as a new employee).
Then, you will check the box that says “Resend welcome invitation” so they are notified of CalSavers again.
Yes. Per Government Code Section 100033(b), each eligible employer that, without good cause, fails to allow its eligible employees to participate in CalSavers, on or before 90 days after service of notice of its failure to comply, shall pay a penalty of $250 per eligible employee if noncompliance extends 90 days or more after the notice, and if found to be in noncompliance 180 days or more after the notice, an additional penalty of $500 per eligible employee.
Have you downloaded the latest update?
Always make sure your program has the most current update. We are continuing to update the Retirement tools as we get more information from CalSavers.
CalSavers Resources
Click here for additional resources.
CalSavers Retirement Savings Program Participation & Funding Snapshot
You can review your specific situation with CalSavers.
Employer Assistance: 855-650-6916
Support Questions or Comments
You can also use the main support email to request customer support with this specific HR module. Depending on the volume of support calls for retirement based questions, you may be assisted by any of our support representatives.