If your 401(k) plan recordkeeper has not talked to your company lately about hardship distributions, it may be time to reach out to the recordkeeper. The short story is that the IRS recently issued an internal memorandum providing guidance to its employee plans examination group on the substantiation requirements for hardship distributions from a section 401(k) plan. While this is not binding on the IRS as a statement of the law, it is useful in that it provides some indication of how the IRS would approach this issue in an audit... Continue Reading