Senators unveil bill to help small businesses offer retirement plans

Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine) on Friday unveiled a bipartisan bill to make it easier for small businesses to offer retirement plans to their employees.

The legislation directs the Department of Labor and the Treasury Department to allow employers and sole-proprietors to file one form to satisfy reporting requirements, instead of a form for each individual plan.

{mosads}Filing one aggregated Form 5500 eliminates duplicative reporting by plan administrators, reducing costs for small businesses. The retirement plans must have the same trustee, fiduciary, plan administration, plan year and investment menu for a small business to be eligible to use the single form.

“Americans simply aren’t saving enough to be able to afford a comfortable retirement. In fact, the Center for Retirement Research estimates that there is an estimated $7.7 trillion gap between what Americans have saved for retirement and what they will actually need,” Collins said in the release. 

“We know that when employers provide their employees with access to retirement plans, approximately 80 percent of them contribute.”

A 2016 report by the Pew Charitable Trusts found that only 22 percent of employees at small businesses have access to workplace savings or pension plans, compared to 74 percent at businesses with 500 employees or more.