Small business owners “don’t have time to read manual after manual,” said Enzi. He also said there is bipartisan support for expansion of multiple employer plans.
John Kalamarides, a senior vice president of institutional investment solutions at Prudential, noted that MEPs could be an important step to reducing the retirement coverage gap between employees of large and small businesses.
However, to make this happen, the executive said federal law needs to be changed.
One key change, he said, is to eliminate the threat that one non-compliant employer can jeopardize the tax status of an entire plan—the so-called “one bad apple” problem.
He added that to expand multiple employer plans, legal barriers should be eliminated that restrict them to closely affiliated businesses.