Every pension plan covered by ERISA files a Form 5500 return/report with the Department of Labor each year, and so does every welfare plan unless an exemption applies. The six questions below take a plan to one of four answers: Form 5500, Form 5500-SF, Form 5500-EZ, or no filing at all.
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.
Once you know a plan files, the clock gives its due date, whether it is late, and what the gap costs on the DOL and IRS counts.
Take the questions in order. Each one either settles the answer or passes the plan to the next question. Every branch comes from the Who Must File section of the 2025 instructions, and the citation sits under the branch it supports.
The count in steps 5 and 6 is not a headcount of employees. How it is taken is set out below, and the small or large plan page covers the 80-120 rule that can keep a plan on the small side.
A pension plan files even when nothing is happening in it.
Under the 2025 Instructions for Form 5500, Section 1: Who Must File, pages 2 and 3, every pension benefit plan covered by ERISA files, whether or not the plan is tax-qualified, benefits no longer accrue, contributions were not made this plan year, or contributions are no longer made.
The types the instructions name include profit-sharing, stock bonus, money purchase and 401(k) plans, 403(b)(1) annuity and 403(b)(7) custodial account arrangements, IRAs an employer establishes under Code section 408(c), and SIMPLE 401(k) plans. A frozen plan still files. So does a plan where the employer stopped contributing. The obligation ends when the plan has distributed everything and filed its final return. The 401(k) page follows that one plan type through the form, the schedules and the audit question.
The rule is the same on its face: every welfare benefit plan covered by ERISA files unless an exemption applies, and welfare benefits include medical, dental, life insurance, apprenticeship and training, scholarship funds, severance pay and disability. The exemption that matters most to small employers is narrow and specific.
Under 29 CFR 2520.104-20, a welfare benefit plan that covered fewer than 100 participants at the beginning of the plan year, is unfunded, fully insured, or a combination of insured and unfunded, and is not subject to the Form M-1 requirements does not file.
Two of those words carry most of the weight. In the instructions' terms, an unfunded welfare plan pays its benefits as needed directly from the general assets of the employer or employee organization that sponsors it, and a fully insured welfare plan provides its benefits exclusively through insurance contracts or policies. A small group health plan bought from an insurer, with the premiums paid by the employer, usually sits inside the exemption. A small plan that pays benefits out of a trust does not, because a trust makes it funded. The instructions spell out how employee contributions affect the answer, so read that paragraph before relying on the exemption for a plan that takes them.
These are outside Title I reporting. a governmental plan does not file, and neither does a church plan that has not elected coverage under Code section 410(d). A church plan that has made the 410(d) election is a different case: it has chosen ERISA coverage and files like any other covered plan.
A one-participant plan is a plan that covers only the business owner, or the owner and spouse, who own the entire business, or only the partners in a partnership and their spouses, and provides benefits to no one else. The solo 401(k) is the usual example. It does not file Form 5500 and it cannot choose to. Whether it files Form 5500-EZ is decided fresh each year on year-end assets, and the final year always files. The Form 5500-EZ page sets out the test and the filing method.
Under 29 CFR 2520.104-23, an unfunded pension plan for a select group of management or highly compensated employees that meets the regulation, including timely filing of a registration statement with the Department of Labor, does not file an annual return.
The condition that trips people is the registration. A top hat plan that never sent the statement to the Department of Labor is not inside the exemption. DFVCP has a route for putting that right, with a flat fee for top hat plans, set out on the DFVCP page.
From plan years beginning in 2023, a defined contribution pension plan counts the participants with account balances at line 6g(1), except that a plan checking the first return box uses the end of year figure at line 6g(2); welfare and defined benefit plans still count total participants at line 5, under 88 FR 11984.
So a 401(k) with 300 eligible employees and 80 account balances is a small plan. A new defined contribution plan filing its first return counts line 6g(2), account balances as of the end of the plan year, because at the start of its first year nobody has a balance yet.
Form 5500 and Form 5500-SF filings are public. To see whether a plan has filed, and for which years, search the plan or sponsor name on the Department of Labor's filing system. EFAST2 If a year is missing, the clock gives the due date that was missed and what the gap costs on each agency's count.
Every 401(k) plan covered by ERISA files, whether or not contributions were made this year. A plan that covers only the owner, or the owner and spouse, is a one-participant plan and files Form 5500-EZ instead, and only for a year its combined year-end assets are over $250,000 or its final year.
Not if it had fewer than 100 participants at the beginning of the plan year, is unfunded, fully insured or a combination of the two, and is not subject to Form M-1. That exemption is in 29 CFR 2520.104-20. A small plan that pays benefits from a trust is funded, so this exemption does not apply.
No. A governmental plan does not file, and neither does a church plan that has not elected coverage under Code section 410(d). A church plan that made the election files like any other ERISA plan.
Search the plan or sponsor name on EFAST2, the Department of Labor's filing system. Form 5500 and Form 5500-SF filings are public. Form 5500-EZ information is available to the public but is not published on the internet.
Figures on this page were last verified against these sources on 2 November 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.
Most filing gaps start with a plan someone believed was exempt. A call with our engineers is about finding those: