IRS Provides Safe Harbor Guidance on Distribution Notices
The Internal Revenue Services (IRS) has issued Notice 2026-13, which provides two safe harbor explanations that plan administrators may use to satisfy the requirement under IRC Section 402(f) to provide certain information to participants requesting plan distributions. One safe harbor applies to non-Roth accounts and the other applies to Roth accounts.
The safe harbor explanations supersede those found in Notice 2020-62 and largely reflect legislative changes under SECURE 2.0. An IRS news release indicates that plan administrators may customize these safe harbor explanations as appropriate. For instance, if the plan does not hold after-tax employee contributions, the plan administrator could eliminate that section of the safe harbor explanation.
