Safe Harbor Deadline for Small Retirement Plan Contributions ERISA requires a retirement plan’s assets to be held in a trust in order to ensure that the assets are used solely to benefit the plan’s participants and beneficiaries. The employer sponsoring the retirement plan is responsible for timely depositing participants’ contributions into the plan’s trust. The Department of Labor (DOL) requires employers to make these deposits as soon as the amounts can reasonably be segregated from the employer’s general assets. In addition, the DOL has established a safe harbor deadline for employers to deposit participant contributions into small retirement plans. An employer that sponsors a small plan (one with fewer than 100 participants at the beginning of the plan year) has the option of using this safe harbor for meeting the deadline for depositing employee contributions into the plan. To take advantage of the safe harbor, employers must deposit employee contributions (including plan loan re