Advocacy News – Oct. 27, 2026
What’s happening: The IRS has released a long-awaited overhaul of the Employee Plans Compliance Resolution System (EPCRS), the program that allows employers to fix retirement plan mistakes. The changes – effectively immediately for 401ks and on May 1 for individual retirement accounts (ICRS)/IRAs) – give plan sponsors more flexibility and time to correct certain errors and additional relief in several common areas.
Why it matters: Retirement plans operate in a highly complex regulatory environment, and even well-run plans occasionally experience compliance errors. EPCRS provides a pathway to fix those mistakes and avoid potentially serious tax qualification issues.
Key changes for employers: The updated EPCRS guidance is more than 100 pages and includes several significant changes, including:
- Expanded self-correction. Employers can now self-correct a broader range of “eligible inadvertent failures,” including many plan loan, eligibility, and document errors, without obtaining advance IRS approval or paying a filing fee.
- No favorable determination letter required. Plans no longer need a favorable IRS determination letter to access the self-correction program.
- Permanent relief for automatic enrollment errors. IRS safe harbor correction methods for auto-enrollment and auto-escalation mistakes are now permanent.
- More flexibility for overpayments. In many situations, retirement plan overpayments made to participants will not need to be recovered or restored to the plan.
- Some errors still require IRS involvement. Employers cannot use self-correction to fix a failure to adopt a written plan in the first place, and certain retroactive amendments remain off-limits.
Go deeper: Check out this ARTICLE from our friends at Miller Canfield for more information.