Summary Annual Report (SAR) for Your Retirement Plan

What is the Summary Annual Report (SAR)? Once a year, you likely receive a one or two page document for your retirement plan entitled Summary Annual Report. What is it?

Every qualified retirement plan is required to annually report with government agencies. They submit a  form each year and generate an SAR to distribute to plan participants. The SAR is required to be distributed to participants (active and terminated) along with other individuals (death beneficiaries and alternate payees from Qualified Domestic Relations Orders) entitled to benefits under the plan.

The SAR is an aggregate or plan-level summary.  It does not tell you how much is in your account.  So what value is it to you?  The form gives you information about the plan administrator with contact information.  You should already have this information. The form also gives information on obtaining the full form from the Department of Labor (DOL). You are entitled to a copy if you want, but you will not receive much useful information from doing so.

In general, it does not tell you a lot. However, it can warn you regarding potential problems. It is key that you compare expected activity to the year reported on the SAR. If you are a participant in a Roth or 401(k) account who made contributions during the year, employee contributions of $0 is a big red flag.   If you are a participant who rolled over funds from an old retirement plan during the reporting year and you see $0 for rollovers from other plans, that is a big red flag. I also suggest reviewing your statements first. If you see the contributions on your statements and the time frames match up, the SAR likely has a reporting error. I would still recommend following up with your contact at the plan administrator since they may need to file a corrected form with the government.

Let's say you rolled over $100,000 to your current employer's plan from the profit sharing at your last employer during the 2011 calendar year. You see the 2011 calendar year statements and SAR both show $0 in rollovers for that new plan. Your prior employer's statement shows the funds went out and you received an IRS Form 1099-R for the 2011 year. Your plan administrator denies receiving the funds and the old company's plan says the same thing. You may wish to escalate the situation to the Department of Labor's EBSA office or the IRS.


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