The IRS expanded its retirement plan correction program on October 22, 2026, through Revenue Procedure 2026-34, which widens the ways employers can fix mistakes in 401(k), 403(b), SEP and SIMPLE IRA plans without a penalty-heavy audit settlement. The new rules took effect the day the IRS announced them. The program is for plan sponsors, meaning employers and plan administrators, not for individual savers.
IRS Chief Executive Officer Frank J. Bisignano said in the announcement that the changes will help because they simplify and speed up how errors in retirement plans and IRAs get fixed. A separate system for IRAs is coming later, and its start date is May 1, 2027.
What Revenue Procedure 2026-34 changes in EPCRS
The program is the Employee Plans Compliance Resolution System, or EPCRS. It has three parts: the Self-Correction Program, the Voluntary Correction Program and the Audit Closing Agreement Program. Revenue Procedure 2026-34 modifies and supersedes the 2021 version, Rev. Proc. 2021-30, and folds in changes from the SECURE 2.0 Act and several earlier IRS notices.
The biggest practical shift is in self-correction. The new procedure covers a defined set of Eligible Inadvertent Failures, which includes loan failures, and a qualified plan or 403(b) plan no longer needs a favorable determination letter to use self-correction. Certain demographic, employer eligibility and plan document failures can now be corrected without filing with the IRS.
Self-correction also reaches SEP and SIMPLE IRA plans for the first time, provided their plan document requirements are met. For those plans, a correction counts as made within a reasonable period if it is completed by the later of the last day of the third plan year after the failure or 18 months after the plan identifies it.
Stay ahead of government payment news: Miss an enrollment or claim deadline and the money can be gone. Join the Retirement Money Brief and we’ll send you our 2026 Government Check Reality Tracker as a welcome gift.
Get the Brief + the check tracker →
We may earn a commission from links on this page.
Whose problem this fixes
Everything in the new procedure runs through the employer. A plan sponsor finds a late deferral, an eligibility mistake or a missed document update, and the sponsor decides whether to self-correct, file under the Voluntary Correction Program or wait for an examination. A participant does not file anything under it.
For workers and retirees in those plans, the effect is indirect. A mistake in how a plan was run can touch real accounts: contributions that were not made on time, someone left out of a plan they should have been in, or a loan handled incorrectly. A cheaper, faster fix means more of those problems get corrected before they grow.
The question for anyone in an employer plan is whether the plan administrator has found an error and whether the sponsor plans to use the program to fix it. Participants cannot invoke EPCRS themselves, but they can ask the plan administrator in writing whether any operational failure has been identified and how it will be corrected. The IRS keeps a page on correcting plan errors that describes how sponsors use the program.
Overpayments and automatic enrollment fixes
Two SECURE 2.0 provisions are built into the new text. One defines an Inadvertent Benefit Overpayment, and the procedure says that under the tax code a corrective payment is generally not required for those overpayments, though a plan may still try to recoup the money subject to ERISA limits. Corrective payments are still required for certain failures of the pay limits in sections 401(a)(17), 415 and 436, with an exception for amounts of $250 or less.
The other provision concerns automatic enrollment. The safe harbor for correcting missed deferrals in plans with automatic enrollment or escalation has no sunset date and is extended to SEP and SIMPLE IRA plans and to terminated employees. Corrective matching contributions must be made within a reasonable period.
The $250 notice requirement for excess amounts is removed, lost-participant procedures are revised and a safe harbor is added for defined benefit plans that failed to give a notice of suspension of benefits. Group submissions under the Voluntary Correction Program are also revised.
Once a plan is under examination, the rules tighten. Self-correction is limited to plans that showed a specific commitment to correct before the exam began, or to insignificant operational failures. That gives sponsors a reason to review their own plans now instead of after an auditor arrives.
The IRA system arrives May 1, 2027
The IRS announced a second procedure alongside this one. Revenue Procedure 2026-33 creates the IRA Compliance Resolution System, a correction program for individual retirement arrangements modeled on EPCRS. It was authorized by the SECURE 2.0 Act and takes effect May 1, 2027.
That system lets IRA custodians and IRA owners request correction of certain inadvertent failures caused by service-provider errors. It also creates a process for waivers of the 60-day rollover deadline, which are handled today through private letter rulings and will move to the new system over 2027 and 2028.
The two dates are easy to confuse. The plan-correction program for employers began October 22, 2026, while the IRA program begins May 1, 2027. Until then, the IRS says the automatic waiver and self-certification procedures for late rollovers under Rev. Procs. 2020-46, 2016-47 and 2003-16 remain available at no cost.
Treasury and the IRS are taking comments on both procedures. Each lists the issues where comments are especially wanted, including how plans should calculate earnings on corrected contributions and whether the Department of Labor’s online calculator should serve as a floor.
Has anyone checked the plan for an error?
A plan error rarely announces itself. A missed contribution or a wrong eligibility date can sit for years until an employer or an auditor finds it, and the correction rules only help once somebody asks the question.
Cut Your Retirement Tax Bill: 12 Moves is a short guide for retirees, and it includes a plan-error checklist and a list of what to ask a plan administrator. Its pages cover the tax lines that matter after retirement, with the 2026 numbers on one page.
Get the plan-error checklist and the questions for a plan administrator →
This article was produced with AI assistance and edited for accuracy against the sources linked above.
