Company forgot to offer me 401k when I qualified now they're giving me $ explain

Tax write-offs for em maybe.

Never heard of that.

How big is the company???

Employee Retirement Income Security Act

ERISA

Ask the company's HR department for a copy of the plan document or the summary plan description (SPD) for the company's 401k and see if it has a profit-share or a match component. A profit-share (or match if you contributed money to the 401k) probably is what they are adding money for. Most companies have a vesting or eligibility period before you can receive a profit-share or match; however, I'm pretty sure that the longest permitted vesting or eligibility is less than 4.5 years. So, they could have not been following the terms of the plan which could violate the Internal Revenue Code or, as another poster mentioned, ERISA.

ETA: You don't have to enroll in the 401k plan to receive a profit-share.

College job man, we were never supposed to qualify. (No paid holidays or sick, but could call in whenever) The firm had turnover early on in my tenure in the accounting area then it was outsourced. Then whoever was supposed to do HR got shuffled around. So they just forgot about me in the shuffle. I would have contributed and did for all of a paycheck or two.

It was a total clusterfrick.

It is a profit sharing plan though, they did away with the match portion though. So could the extra cash have been my portion of the profit share, and will it continue as long as my plan is there? I'm 40% vested.

I recently switched jobs and when I left my old company i had X in my 401k. I did not roll it over yet. When I got my statement last month, it had 3k more in it than when I left in a matter of 3-4 months. I know the market hasn't done that well

I'm thinking maybe they owed me vacation time or something and just dumped it in my 401k.. Maybe same for you?