TRS Gemini Supplemental Savings Reports

3/7/2022

 

Earlier this year the Illinois Teacher Retirement System (TRS) announced Gemini reporting requirements for Supplemental Savings Plans (SSP). We’ve been working closely with them and last week released support for the latest changes. We’ve written two knowledge base articles to help you get started. 

 

403(b) and 457(b) Plans

TRS 457(b) Plans

 

Administering SSP’s is complex. Each plan has a maximum contribution, which can be different for each employee. To determine if an employee is over the limit, you must total their previous contributions across multiple payroll items (regular, roth, employee, employer, etc) and payroll runs. This can be pretty labor intensive without purpose-built tools, especially since it needs to be done every payroll.

 

To make this easier, we’ve added payroll validations that prevent employees from exceeding the maximum contribution. During each payroll run, their total contribution is automatically calculated. When they hit the maximum, their deduction is reduced for all future payroll runs in the calendar year. 

 

Since SSP’s run on a calendar year, reporting can be a challenge. So we’ve updated the payroll reports to work across fiscal years, and added a date range filter. We think these changes will be helpful in a wide variety of situations, but especially with SSP’s. 

 

 

While the SSP available through TRS is a 457(b) plan, many school districts also offer 403(b) plans as well. We’ve added support, payroll items, and payroll validations for both plan types. And when tax season comes back around, both plans will automatically appear on enrolled employees’ W-2’s with the appropriate codes. 

 

We hope you like the changes. Keep an eye on the news page for more updates. 

 

 

The Common Goal Team