Resources
Find the rule, the derivation and the reasoning
Everything published about how a filing becomes a professional question. Each item names the regulation, the filed document or the derivation it rests on, so you can check it.
Start with the rule.
The filing-category question comes first, and the regulation answers it. These four pages cover it in order: what the rule says, how we apply it to filings, what is in the data, and what one record looks like.
- Audit requirement screen
- The 2023 participant-count change and the 80–120 election, written out, with an interactive screen for one plan year. It screens. It does not conclude.
- Data & methodology
- Sources, freshness, coverage scope, how the filing-category screen is derived, and where the public record stops.
- Data coverage
- The indexed universe, what each field means, and the boundaries we will not claim past.
- Sample plan
- One synthetic record end to end, so the structure is legible before you have an account.
Read the published analysis
Long-form briefings on the questions the derivations had to answer precisely. Each states its scope, separates rules from interpretations, and carries its sources to the end. Corrections get a dated changelog entry.
- The 80–120 band is an election
- Filing rules · the band sits on top of the default rule as a permitted prior-year category election, and the waiver is a separate test.
- What the 2023 change did to first-time audits
- Market structure · dropping eligible-but-zero-balance participants changed the shape of the inflow, not only its size.
- The Form 5500 is an index
- Document evidence · opinion language, delinquent contributions and forfeiture balances sit in attachments a return-only dataset cannot answer.
Track the regulatory and litigation docket
A dated record of DOL and EBSA guidance, IRS and PCAOB developments, and ERISA litigation that changes what a practitioner should look for in a filing.
Nothing is published here yet. When it is, each entry will carry its primary source, its date, and a plain statement of what that source says, and no more. Litigation entries will name the case and the court and state what is alleged, because a complaint is a filing and not a finding.
Until then this section stays empty. The standard is the same one used everywhere else here: if it cannot be sourced, it does not go up.
- Status
- Editorial development
- Scope when it opens
- DOL/EBSA, IRS, PCAOB, SEC and ERISA litigation affecting plan audits
- Boundary
- Primary sources only, each entry linked and dated
How we maintain this
- Changelog
- Every material correction, dated, including the ones that were our own error.
- Trust
- Four things you can verify before talking to us, and the claims we will not borrow.
- Security & data handling
- How the service is separated, and which attestations we do not hold.
Questions about any derivation on this page go to tkadura@5500radar.com.
Test it against a plan you already know.
The fastest way to check any of this is to run a plan whose answer you can verify yourself.