02.09.10
DOL Fines Businesses Without Email

The Department of Labor has gone paperless this year, forcing small businesses that were trying to hold out on adopting email and gaining Internet savvy to yield to the technological trends of our time. The DOL is requiring that all forms for the 2009 Plan year be submitted to the agency electronically with no exceptions. Thus, businesses with a pension plan or a 401k, for example, must comply or face a $15,000 penalty.

Brett Goldstein, a Plainview, New York-based pension administrator and president of The Pension Department, says that the law is designed to save the government money by reducing manual operations. But its strategy may conversely affect small businesses. "A petition is being sent to the Department of Labor asking them to allow actuaries and tax preparers to file the Form 5500 on [their clients’] behalf,” says Goldstein. “It's one thing to allow companies to electronically file, but to mandate that everyone must file electronically without any exceptions is unconstitutional. To assume that every business in America has access to the Internet and knows how to use it or wants to, is ridiculous.”

So far, groups that have approached the DOL asking permission to use a tax preparer have been told the ID and password given to employers to electronically file must be protected and not shared.