If you sponsor a 401(k) plan for your small business, you may have already missed a federal mailing deadline you didn't know existed — and the Department of Labor just admitted the rule was too confusing to enforce yet.
Buried in SECURE 2.0, the 2022 retirement-law overhaul that most business owners remember for catch-up contributions and auto-enrollment mandates, is a much quieter provision: starting with plan years that began after December 31, 2025, defined contribution plans like 401(k)s and SIMPLE IRAs must mail participants at least one paper benefit statement every year, even if the plan normally handles everything electronically. Defined benefit pension plans get a longer leash — one paper statement every three years — but the obligation is the same in spirit.
For a lot of small businesses that run lean, paperless retirement plans through a payroll provider or a low-cost 401(k) platform, this came as news in the worst possible way: many first-quarter 2026 statements were due by May 15, 2026, and the Department of Labor's Employee Benefits Security Administration (EBSA) didn't publish proposed rules on how to actually implement the mandate until February 25, 2026 — barely two and a half months before the deadline. Plan administrators were being asked to comply with a paper-mail rule before the government had finished explaining what compliance looked like.
EBSA seems to have recognized the problem. On May 12, 2026, it issued Field Assistance Bulletin No. 2026-02, a temporary enforcement policy that gives plan sponsors breathing room — but not a free pass. Here's what changed, what didn't, and what a small business running its own 401(k) should do this quarter.
What SECURE 2.0's paper statement rule actually requires
The underlying statute is ERISA Section 105(a)(2)(E), added by SECURE 2.0 Section 338. Stripped of the legal language, it means:
- Defined contribution plans (401(k), 403(b), SIMPLE IRA, profit-sharing) must furnish at least one benefit statement on paper each calendar year — even for participants who've otherwise agreed to electronic delivery under the older "notice and access" or "wired at work" safe harbors.
- Defined benefit plans must furnish one paper statement every three calendar years.
- Plans cannot charge participants for the mandatory paper copy.
- Participants who have affirmatively elected all-electronic delivery of every plan document — not just passively defaulted into it — are exempt from receiving the mandatory paper statement.
- Any participant who becomes eligible for the plan on or after January 1, 2026, must first receive a one-time paper notice explaining their right to request paper disclosures, delivered before the plan sends them any statement electronically.
The intent, according to EBSA's own commentary, is straightforward: plenty of retirement-plan participants — particularly older workers, workers without reliable internet access, or workers who simply don't check a portal they were auto-enrolled into — were effectively getting no benefit statement at all under fully electronic delivery. Congress decided an annual paper touchpoint was worth the mailing cost.
Why the DOL blinked
The compliance timeline was the problem, not the policy. Plans with calendar-year plan years hit the "plan years beginning after December 31, 2025" trigger on January 1, 2026. Quarterly benefit statements (required for participant-directed individual account plans, which covers most small-business 401(k)s) were due roughly 45 days after each quarter closed — meaning the Q1 2026 statement deadline landed around May 15, 2026.
The DOL's proposed rule, which would clarify exactly how the paper mandate interacts with the existing 2002 and 2020 electronic-disclosure safe harbors, wasn't published in the Federal Register until February 25, 2026 — and it's still just a proposal, not a final rule. Plan administrators were staring down a hard mailing deadline while the rulebook for meeting it was still in draft form, including unresolved questions about which safe harbor a plan's existing electronic-delivery consents fall under and how the new paper mandate layers on top of them.
Rather than let a wave of small plans fall into technical violations over a rule the agency itself hadn't finished writing, EBSA's FAB 2026-02 announced it will not pursue enforcement action against plan administrators who comply in good faith with a reasonable interpretation of either the February 2026 proposed rule or the underlying statute directly. Practically, that means a plan can keep following its existing electronic-disclosure process — as long as it makes a documented, good-faith effort to also meet the new paper-statement and initial-notice requirements — without fear of a DOL enforcement action while the rule is still being finalized. The relief lasts, in EBSA's words, "until after the Department issues a final regulation or other administrative guidance" — there's no fixed expiration date.
What "good faith" means for a small plan sponsor
Neither the bulletin nor early commentary from ERISA counsel (see summaries from Groom Law Group and Boutwell Fay) spells out a bright-line test. What consistently comes up as the practical standard is:
- Pick an interpretation and write it down. Decide whether you're following the February 2026 proposed rule or a plain reading of the statute, and document that choice — ideally in an email or memo from your recordkeeper or ERISA counsel, not just a verbal understanding.
- Actually send the required paper statement. Good-faith relief covers ambiguity about how to comply, not whether to comply. If your plan hasn't mailed a paper statement to non-electing participants this year, that's the gap to close first.
- Confirm your recordkeeper is handling the one-time new-participant notice. Most small businesses outsource statement delivery to their 401(k) platform (Guideline, Human Interest, Empower, ADP, etc.), but the legal obligation to comply sits with the plan administrator — typically the business owner or a named fiduciary — not the vendor. Ask your provider directly whether the January 2026-forward paper notice is being generated automatically.
- Keep records of your compliance effort. Screenshots of mailing confirmations, vendor correspondence about their interpretation of the rule, and dated notes on your decision-making are what "documented good faith" looks like if the DOL ever asks.
- Watch for the final rule. Once EBSA finalizes the regulation, the temporary relief ends and the final rule's specific requirements — which may differ from the current proposal — become the actual compliance bar.
Why this matters even if you think your plan is "fully electronic"
A lot of small-business owners assume that because their 401(k) provider handles everything through a portal, they're insulated from paper-mail obligations. SECURE 2.0's paper statement rule specifically targets that assumption. Unless every one of your plan's participants has affirmatively opted into all-electronic delivery — a genuine election, not a default setting baked into your onboarding paperwork — your plan likely owes at least a subset of participants a mailed statement this year, mid-rule-change or not.
This is also a reminder that retirement-plan compliance is a recurring bookkeeping and recordkeeping obligation, not a set-it-and-forget-it box you check once at plan setup. Between annual Form 5500 filings, nondiscrimination testing, and now an annual paper-mailing requirement with its own documentation trail, a 401(k) generates real administrative overhead that's easy to lose track of if it isn't tied into your regular financial record-keeping.
Keep Your Compliance Records as Organized as Your Books
Retirement-plan deadlines like FAB 2026-02's good-faith documentation window are the kind of detail that's easy to lose in a spreadsheet or an inbox — right up until an auditor or the DOL asks for proof. Beancount.io gives small businesses plain-text accounting that's transparent, version-controlled, and easy to search back through, so compliance notes, vendor correspondence dates, and financial records all stay in one auditable trail instead of scattered across tools. Get started for free and see why developers and finance-minded business owners are switching to plain-text accounting.