Read this before you treat anything on sterlingpensiongroup.com as a reason to adopt, fund, freeze, or terminate a retirement plan. The short version: the site is education. Your deduction, your contribution, and your filing are decided from your facts, current law, and the professionals engaged to do that work.
Not tax, legal, investment, or actuarial advice
Nothing on this site is tax advice, legal advice, investment advice, accounting advice, or actuarial advice. Nothing here is an opinion letter, a coverage or nondiscrimination test, a valuation, or a determination that a contribution is deductible. Tax results depend on your entity, your compensation, your other plans, your employees, and the return your CPA actually files.
We are not the actuary
Sterling Pension Group LLC is a third-party administrator and retirement-plan consultant. We are not an actuarial firm and we do not hold ourselves out as Enrolled Actuaries. When a defined benefit or cash balance plan requires a certified actuarial valuation or a signed Schedule SB, that work is performed by an independent Enrolled Actuary we coordinate with. A page on this website is not that certification.
Illustrations are not limits and not promises
The Internal Revenue Service publishes dollar ceilings, including elective-deferral limits, annual-addition limits, compensation caps, and the defined-benefit dollar limit. Those ceilings change. A cash balance or defined benefit contribution is not one of those published numbers. It is the amount an actuary calculates from a benefit formula, age, pay, interest credits, and the census. Any dollar figure on this site that describes what an owner “might” contribute is illustrative. It assumes facts we state next to it, usually steady pay and little or no staff cost. Change the facts and the number changes. An illustration is not a guarantee of a deduction, a tax savings, or a future account balance.
No performance or tax-savings promise
We do not promise that a plan will be worth more than the contributions, that investments will earn the interest-crediting rate, or that you will save any particular amount of tax. Investment results can fall short of the plan’s crediting rate. When they do, future contributions can go up. A higher contribution in a later year is a feature of the funding rules, not a failure of the website.
Rules, deadlines, and coverage are plan-specific
Deadlines described in the briefing — including Form 5500, minimum funding, and deduction timing — are the general calendar-year pattern. Your plan year, your entity, your extension, and your controlled group can move them. PBGC coverage is not automatic and is not automatically absent for a professional practice. Employee class, hours, and ownership can pull people into a plan you thought was owner-only. Confirm every date with your third-party administrator, your actuary, and your CPA before you rely on it.
Law changes
SECURE, SECURE 2.0, IRS notices, and later guidance can change what a plan may do, including Roth catch-up treatment in a paired 401(k). Articles in the owner briefing are dated. An article from 2024 describes the rules as of that week. It is not a statement of today’s rule if a later briefing or a statute has overtaken it. The IRS and the Department of Labor are the sources for the official figures. Our summaries can be incomplete.
No reliance, and no client relationship
You may not rely on this site as the basis for adopting a plan, setting a contribution, signing a Form 5500, or taking a deduction. Using the calculator, reading a briefing, or sending an inquiry does not create a client, fiduciary, or advisory relationship. That relationship begins only under a signed engagement. Until then, you are responsible for your own decisions and for the advice of your own CPA, attorney, and actuary.
Third-party materials
Links to IRS.gov, DOL.gov, PBGC.gov, and other sites are provided so you can read the source. We do not control those sites and we are not responsible for their content or for changes after we link to them.
Limitation
To the fullest extent the law allows, Sterling Pension Group LLC is not liable for damages arising out of your use of, or reliance on, the public website. See also the Terms of Use and Your Privacy.
Questions about this disclaimer: use our contact form, Sterling Pension Group LLC, 15 N Main St #100, West Hartford, CT 06107.