Form 5500 under ERISA is five facts for one plan: the plan year end, the seventh-month date, the Form 5558 extended date, whether a Department of Labor notice has arrived, and the count that sets the DFVCP cap. For a TPA holding three hundred plans it is five facts times three hundred, and the register has to exist before the first client meeting, not after the first letter.
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.
Paste a header line, then one plan per line, and read the register: statutory date, extended date, both day counts, DFVCP open or closed, and both agencies' exposure. The 8955-SSA column is a census question the clock cannot answer. Free, no sign up, nothing leaves the page.
Anyone in a TPA can work out one late plan in ten minutes with the DOL calculator open in another tab. For a firm holding three hundred plans it is those same five facts three hundred times, with plan year ends across the calendar, filed dates in three systems, and a count that changed meaning for defined contribution plans in 2023. That is a register you build and then keep, and the Department's notices do not wait for you to finish it.
The clock has a book mode. Start with a header line naming the columns you have, then one line per plan, commas or tabs. The columns can go in any order and only the header has to match, so paste the export you already have and rename its first row:
The plan name is the column people leave out, and leaving it out can cost real money. The per-plan cap is worked out inside a group of lines that share a plan name. A plan with more than one late year has to carry the same name on every one of its lines, or the run prices each year at the cap per annual report and the per-plan cap never applies to it at all. That is the cap this page is selling, so give every plan a name even if it is only a client code.
A reader who would rather not write a header can paste in the engine's own column order: plan_id, plan_year_end, plan_type, participants, filed_date, extension, corporate_extended_due, sponsor_501c3, dol_notice, prior_late_years, one_participant.
Paste, run, and the register comes back one row per plan, sorted by what is closing soonest. Nothing you paste leaves the page. The DOL calculator prices one filing at a time and does not say whether the door is still open. Ours is free, does the whole book at once, and leads with the decision. DFVCP penalty calculator
This is the part most guidance gets wrong, and the reason the register has a column for each. The two counts start on different days.
Under 78 FR 6135, Section 3.03(b)(1), the DFVCP fee is $10 for each day the annual report is filed late, and the fee runs from the original due date, without regard to any extension.
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, and the section 6652(e) count is determined with regard to any extension of time for filing, so a valid extension moves the day the IRS count starts.
A plan that filed a valid Form 5558 and then missed the extended date has an IRS count starting after the extended date and a DFVCP count running from the original date. One "days late" number for both is wrong on one of them. The DFVCP count ends at the date the delinquent report reaches EFAST2.
| Plan | Statutory date | Extended date | DFVCP days | IRS days | DFVCP | DOL exposure | IRS exposure | 8955-SSA |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Calendar year plan, unfiled, no notice | from the engine | from the engine | from the statutory date | same, no 5558 | Open, capped at $750 for the year | up to $2,739 a day | $250 a day, capped at $150,000 | Census question, not computed |
| Large plan, 5558 filed, notice received | from the engine | from the engine | from the statutory date, extension disregarded | from the extended date | Closed | up to $2,739 a day, at the Department's discretion | $250 a day, capped at $150,000 | Census question, not computed |
Exposure columns show each agency's statutory maximum, never a sum. An owner-only plan gets its own kind of row: no DFVCP line, and the Rev Proc 2015-32 fee of $500 per return instead, on the 5500-EZ page.
DFVCP is open only to a plan administrator who completes the submission before being notified in writing by the Department of a failure to file a timely annual report under Title I of ERISA. A letter ends eligibility for that year on arrival, and the Department names a Notice of Intent to Assess a Penalty as the disqualifier. EBSA, DFVCP The register carries that as one word per row. Forty late plans and no notices is a pricing exercise. Three notices in that forty is three conversations, and the register says which three.
Under 78 FR 6135, Section 3.03(b), the DFVCP fee is capped at the greater of $750 per annual report or, where one submission covers more than one delinquent report for the plan, $1,500 per plan for a small plan, and at the greater of $2,000 per annual report or, for a submission covering more than one delinquent report for the plan, $4,000 per plan for a large plan.
One late year for a small plan is $750; four in one submission are $1,500. One large year in a run of small ones puts the whole submission on the large pair, $2,000 and $4,000. The small plan or large plan page has the count that picks the pair.
Two agencies, two statutes, two columns, never added: one is a discretionary maximum with no ceiling, the other a fixed daily rate with a cap.
Under ERISA section 502(c)(2), the Department of Labor may assess up to $2,739 a day for 2026 against a plan administrator who fails to file, the figure carried into 2026 by the Department's notification at 91 FR 31358, published 27 May 2026 and indexed under 29 CFR 2575.3 and the Department of Labor's annual adjustment table at 90 FR 1854.
Side by side, a partner sees which agency is doing the damage on each row. The DFVCP fee closes the Department's column. The IRS column comes off on a condition.
Under IRS Notice 2014-35, the IRS does not impose its late-filing penalty 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.
That form goes to the IRS directly, never through EFAST2, so a DFVCP submission leaves it behind. The clock takes no input for it, so the register leaves that column for you to fill from the census and writes the IRS relief line as the route the Notice sets out, not as a finding about the form. Detail on the 8955-SSA page.
Every January the same thing happens in every TPA. Someone opens last year's list, adds the new plans, drops the terminated ones, updates the counts, and works out which plans missed the seventh month. The rule holds still, at the date set by 29 CFR 2520.104a-5(a)(2). What moves is the list, and a list is data.
We are 02Launch, an AI engineering firm out of Google and Microsoft. We built this clock, and we build the thing behind it for firms that hold plans at scale. The recurring build reruns the register every January against your census and filing exports, with a line for every plan that moved. That build is the engagement. The clock, and the first register, are not.
Hold one plan and the tool is free. Hold a book and the register is the meeting you walk into with the answer already built.
Yes. Start with a header line naming the columns you have, such as plan, pye, type, count, filed, ext and notice, then one line per plan. The columns can go in any order and only the header has to match. Include the plan name column, because a plan's late years are grouped on it and the per-plan cap only applies inside a group. The clock returns one register row per plan, sorted by what is closing soonest, and nothing pasted leaves the page.
No. Under 78 FR 6135, Section 3.03(b)(1), the fee runs from the original due date, without regard to any extension. The IRS count is the opposite: the section 6652(e) count is determined with regard to any extension of time for filing, so a valid extension moves the day the IRS count starts. One late filing, two day counts, which is why the register carries a column for each.
Five facts: the plan year end, whether and when the return was filed, whether a Form 5558 went in, whether the Department of Labor has sent a written notice of failure to file, and the participant count at the start of the plan year, which sets the DFVCP cap.
No. It computes dates, program status and exposure from what is entered. The administrator still files through EFAST2 and pays the DFVCP fee through the Department of Labor's own calculator. Nothing reaches either agency from this site.
They are different kinds of number. The Department of Labor figure is a discretionary daily maximum under ERISA section 502(c)(2). The IRS figure is a fixed daily rate with a per-return cap under Internal Revenue Code section 6652(e). Summing them would state a liability neither agency assesses.
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.
Because the January run is the same for every plan in the book and nobody should do it by hand twice, the call is about your list: