Form 5500 filers who use the Department of Labor's DFVCP get IRS relief on the late penalty only if any Form 8955-SSA required for that year is also filed, separately, with the IRS, on paper, marked DFVC, inside a fixed window. The 8955-SSA never goes through EFAST2, which is why it is the step most delinquent filers miss.
This page is about the ERISA Form 5500, the annual return/report that employee benefit plans file with the Department of Labor and the IRS through EFAST2. The same number is used for an unrelated US Navy supply form, and other countries use different form numbers for their pension returns; none of that applies here.
The clock gives the DFVCP figures for a late year and the relief route the Notice sets out. Whether the Form 8955-SSA went in is a census question, and this page is how you answer it.
A plan that goes through DFVCP pays the Department of Labor's fee and gets relief from the Department's penalty. Most filers assume the IRS side comes with it. It does, but only if a second form was filed as well, and that form never touches EFAST2.
Under IRS Notice 2014-35, the IRS will not impose penalties under sections 6652(d), 6652(e) and 6692 where the plan is eligible for and satisfies DFVCP for the delinquent return, and any Form 8955-SSA required for that year is filed separately with the IRS on paper.
Two parts, and the second is the one that gets left behind. The Form 5500 goes to the Department of Labor through EFAST2 with the DFVC box checked. The Form 8955-SSA goes to the IRS, separately, on paper, marked a particular way, inside a fixed window. Miss any of that and the fee bought relief from one agency only.
Under IRS Notice 2014-35, the filer must check the box on Line C, Part I for a special extension and write DFVC in the space provided on Line C, and the Form 8955-SSA must be filed within 30 calendar days of completing the DFVC filing.
Four checks, one of them a tick box. Three of the four are about how the form reaches the IRS, not about what is on it.
Read it as a decision, because that is how it behaves. Filed through DFVCP with no Form 8955-SSA required for the year: relief follows. Filed through DFVCP with the required Form 8955-SSA filed separately, on paper, marked, inside the window: relief follows. Any other combination: relief does not follow, and the IRS penalty on the annual return stays live.
Under 26 U.S.C. 6652(e), the IRS penalty for a late annual return is $250 a day, capped at $150,000 per return.
That figure is what the relief switches off, and it is per return, so a plan four years late is looking at four of them. The relief also reaches the penalty that belongs to the Form 8955-SSA itself, at 26 U.S.C. 6652(d), and the one at section 6692. This page gives no figure for either, because the register behind the clock does not carry one and we do not print figures it has not verified.
Under IRS Notice 2014-35, relief is available only where the Form 5500 series return is required under Title I of ERISA.
So the relief reaches the Form 5500 and Form 5500-SF filings that the Department of Labor's rules require, and it does not reach a one-participant plan filing Form 5500-EZ. Those plans are on a different track, the IRS program under Revenue Procedure 2015-32, covered on the Form 5500-EZ page. The same sentence explains why a DFVCP fee paid for an owner-only plan buys nothing at either agency.
Form 8955-SSA is the annual registration statement for separated participants with deferred vested benefits. In plain words: a list of people who left the employer, are owed a benefit from the plan later, and have not been paid out. The IRS passes the list to the Social Security Administration, which tells those people about the benefit when they claim years later. It replaced the old Schedule SSA that used to attach to the Form 5500. IRS, About Form 8955-SSA
Form 8955-SSA is not submitted through EFAST2; it goes directly to the IRS on paper, as the Department of Labor's own DFVCP page instructs.
That one sentence is the whole reason this form is the weak point in a DFVCP run. Every other piece of the submission goes through one system in one session. This one leaves the building. EFAST2
This page does not give a due date for Form 8955-SSA. The register behind the clock verifies the DFVC relief condition and not the form's filing date, so the date is not printed here. The IRS page for the form is in the sources below, and the paragraph above describing what the form is and where it goes comes from that page rather than from the register.
It does not decide this one, and it does not pretend to. The clock takes no input for the Form 8955-SSA, so the relief line it writes is the route the Notice sets out for a DFVCP filer, not a finding that the condition above was met. Read it as conditional on the sentence above every time. IRS Form 5500 corner
It does not know who separated from your client's plan. You do, from the census. And it files nothing with either agency. Across a book, the 8955-SSA answer is the column you fill in beside the register, one census question per late plan year.
A large plan that extended, missed the extended date, and is still eligible for the program. Every figure below is the engine's. The 8955-SSA question is not in it.
| Plan year end | 31 December 2024 |
|---|---|
| Form | Form 5500 |
| Participants | 140 |
| Extension | Form 5558 |
| Filed | 1 September 2026 |
| Read as of | 21 September 2026 |
| DFVCP fee | Department of Labor and IRS figures | |
|---|---|---|
| Counted from | the statutory due date, 31 July 2025 | the extended due date, 15 October 2025 |
| Days late | 397 | 321 |
| What that count prices | the program fee, $2,000.00 | $879,219 and $80,250 |
| Where the plan stands | filed, and filed late |
|---|---|
| Statutory due date | 31 July 2025 |
| Form 5558 extended due date | 15 October 2025 |
| Days late for the DFVCP fee, counted from the statutory due date of 31 July 2025 | 397 |
| Days late for both agencies' figures, counted from the extended due date of 15 October 2025 | 321 |
| Small or large for the fee caps | large plan |
| Fee at the daily rate, before any cap | $3,970.00 |
| Cap per annual report, large plan | $2,000.00 |
| Which cap bound | the cap per annual report |
| DFVCP fee for this report | $2,000.00 |
| Department of Labor exposure without the program, at $2,739 a day | $879,219 |
| IRS exposure, Internal Revenue Code section 6652(e) | $80,250 |
| Relief route the clock reports | follows the DFVCP filing |
Read the last row as the route, not as a finding. The clock has no input for whether a Form 8955-SSA was filed for this year, so it cannot report that the condition on this page failed. It reports the route Notice 2014-35 sets out for a DFVCP filer, and the condition is yours to check against the census.
Computed by the Form 5500 Rescue Clock engine from the inputs shown. Every date and amount is the engine's output, never typed by hand. An estimate, not a filing.
The Department of Labor daily figure on the exposure row is the 2026 figure, unchanged from 2025, and the notification carrying it into 2026 is at 91 FR 31358, published 27 May 2026.
Across a book, the 8955-SSA flag costs a census question per plan. Left alone, it leaves an IRS exposure on every DFVCP plan that had a separation in a late year, after the client has been told the matter is closed. That is an awkward second call. The TPA and broker page shows where the flag sits in the register.
No. Under IRS Notice 2014-35 the relief holds only where the plan is eligible for and satisfies DFVCP for the delinquent return, and any Form 8955-SSA required for that year is filed separately with the IRS on paper. If a Form 8955-SSA was required for the year and was not filed, IRS relief does not follow and the penalty on the annual return stays live.
The filer must check the box on Line C, Part I for a special extension and write DFVC in the space provided on Line C. It has to be filed within 30 calendar days of completing the DFVC filing, so the window runs from the DFVC filing rather than from the plan year end.
No. Form 8955-SSA is not submitted through EFAST2; it goes directly to the IRS on paper. A DFVCP submission is an EFAST2 submission plus a payment to the Department of Labor, so it can never include the 8955-SSA.
Under IRS Notice 2014-35 the relief covers sections 6652(d), 6652(e) and 6692. Section 6652(e) is the penalty on the late annual return, at $250 a day capped at $150,000 per return. This page gives no figure for the penalty at 26 U.S.C. 6652(d), because the register behind the clock does not carry one.
No. Under IRS Notice 2014-35, relief is available only where the Form 5500 series return is required under Title I of ERISA. A one-participant plan filing Form 5500-EZ is outside Title I, so it is on the separate IRS track under Revenue Procedure 2015-32 instead.
Figures on this page were last verified against these sources on 21 September 2026. Where this page and the Department of Labor or the IRS disagree, the agency is right and this page is wrong; tell us at hello@02launch.com.
02Launch is an AI engineering firm out of Google and Microsoft. We built the Form 5500 Rescue Clock because the late Form 5500 decision sits across two agencies and nobody had put it in one place for a plan book.
The 8955-SSA flag is a census question per plan, and across a book it is the difference between closed and half closed. A call with our engineers is about the whole list: