Posting by Larry Beebe, CPA

We hear the excuses all the time.  Some multi-employer plans don’t do payroll audits and they have excuses as to why they don’t do them.  Here are the top ten excuses for plans not doing payroll audits:

1. Our auditors send out confirmations and get no exceptions.
2. Participants would complain if they did not get credit.
3. The plan has strong internal controls over the contribution process.
4. The union business representatives police all of the jobs.
5. Our union has strong shop stewards who know everyone in the union.
6. The employers would never let us look at their records.
7. Our management trustees don’t want us to audit employers.
8. It is a waste of plan assets to do payroll audits,
9. All of our employers are honest.
10. We used to do payroll audits but we never had any findings.

In future postings we will refute each of these ten excuses.  Send us other excuses you have heard.  We will add them to the list and do our best to provide rebuttal for each of them.