How 401kROBS.com checks ROBS facts, provider claims, and examples

This policy explains the public standard for checking reader-facing ROBS education, provider comparisons, tools, directories, and trust pages. It is not a private workflow manual, staffing claim, legal opinion, audit program, provider-monitoring service, or promise that every possible error will be found before publication.

The practical standard is reproducibility. A reader or editor should be able to identify what type of claim is being made, where the source sits in the hierarchy, whether the source directly supports the wording, and what limits remain.

What is not checked through this policy: a reader's personal eligibility, tax treatment, fiduciary compliance, investment suitability, loan approval, franchise fit, valuation adequacy, business viability, or provider contract obligations. Those depend on account records, plan documents, business facts, written provider scope, and qualified professionals.

• Primary authority controls legal, tax, fiduciary, filing, rollover, correction, and agency-position claims when available. IRS ROBS materials support the ROBS stock-purchase sequence, examination questions, filing issues, valuation issues, prohibited-transaction concerns, discrimination concerns, and business-failure risks. [1]
• DOL fiduciary materials support plan-document, trust, recordkeeping, fiduciary-process, service-provider selection, monitoring, reasonable-fee, participant-disclosure, prohibited-transaction, employer-stock fair-market-value, and no-sales-commission boundaries. [2] [3]
• Official rollover materials support direct rollover, trustee-to-trustee transfer, 60-day rollover, withholding, eligible rollover distribution, plan-acceptance, and distribution-availability statements. [4]
• Provider-controlled sources establish what a provider publishes or states. They do not independently establish best provider, safest provider, guaranteed compliance, customer satisfaction, professional advice, or suitability for a reader's transaction. [5] [6]

If sources conflict, the stronger and more specific source controls where possible. A provider marketing page does not override IRS or DOL guidance for legal, filing, rollover, or fiduciary issues. When the conflict cannot be resolved from available public sources, the page should narrow the statement, label the uncertainty, or tell the reader what written confirmation or professional review is needed.

Material claims should carry a citation close enough that the reader can connect the sentence to the support. Dense legal, tax, fee, provider, and numerical sections should cite near the specific sentence or paragraph, not only in a general source list at the bottom. Unsupported source lists do not cure unsupported claims.

Labels matter. The site should distinguish primary authority from provider-reported facts, estimated calculations, observed current-site practices, unavailable public facts, and editorial judgment. Provider statements are useful evidence for what the provider says; they are not proof that the service is appropriate, complete, compliant, or best.

Numbers are checked by matching inputs to the source or stated assumption, recalculating the arithmetic, and naming important omissions. For provider fees, that means separating setup fees, recurring administration fees, per-participant charges, state filing costs, valuation costs, financing costs, pass-through expenses, optional services, exit charges, and unknown contract terms when the public source does not answer them. [3] [6]

Example policy: if a provider publishes a $4,995 setup fee and $165 monthly administration fee, a first-year base example is $4,995 plus 12 times $165, or $6,975. That example should still say what it omits and should not imply total cost, lowest cost, or superior compliance. [3] [6]

Provider pages, pricing, ownership, guarantees, audit-support language, service inclusions, phone numbers, promotions, operating status, and third-party relationships can change. Provider facts should therefore include source dates or current-source wording where the page architecture supports it, and should use labels such as provider publishes, provider states, checked source, not publicly stated, or unavailable.

The current sitemap convention for trust pages uses August 14, 2026. That date is a route last-modified convention, not a promise that every provider fact is monitored continuously or refreshed on a fixed schedule.

High-risk ROBS topics get narrower wording, stronger citations, and clearer professional boundaries because a wrong answer can affect tax, retirement-plan, fiduciary, corporate, valuation, lending, or business decisions.

• ROBS legality and tax treatment
• eligible retirement-account movement
• C corporation and qualified-plan mechanics
• employer-stock valuation and adequate consideration
• prohibited transactions and conflicts
• Form 5500, Form 1120, Form 1099-R, and Form 945 context
• employee eligibility, coverage, nondiscrimination, and top-heavy issues
• provider audit support or guarantees
• professional boundaries for attorneys, CPAs, valuation professionals, lenders, franchisors, and TPAs
• business failure, bankruptcy, sale, redemption, and plan termination

The site can identify likely professional roles, such as ERISA attorney, CPA, TPA, valuation professional, lender, franchise counsel, payroll provider, or transaction adviser. It should not imply those professionals have reviewed every page or that general content settles an individual matter.

When public evidence does not answer a point, the page should say so. Examples include provider services not publicly stated, fees that require a written quote, state filings that depend on entity facts, plan rules that depend on the governing document, and rollover availability that depends on the distributing account's conditions. [4] [6]

The site should not average conflicting sources into a convenient answer. It should identify the type of conflict, prefer the controlling or more specific source where justified, and explain what the reader should verify in writing before relying on the statement.

Fact-checking continues when a page is updated, a cited source changes, a provider changes public information, a reader flags an error, or a claim no longer fits the supporting evidence. Current public pages explain that the site does not publish a dedicated correction-request form, correction email address, or correction service-level agreement. [7] [8] [9]

If a reader sees a possible error, outdated provider claim, broken source, unclear affiliate label, or unsupported statement, the current public path is to use the relevant page links and trust destinations: About, Editorial Policy, Advertising Policy, author page, provider methodology, and Corrections Policy.

This policy should improve accountability without inventing institutional processes. It does not promise:

• universal human, professional, legal, tax, compliance, or expert review for every page
• real-time provider monitoring, exhaustive accuracy, fixed verification cadence, correction deadline, correction SLA, or guaranteed update schedule
• independence guarantees beyond the observable affiliate, advertising, editorial, and methodology language
• IRS approval, DOL approval, guaranteed compliance, safest provider, best provider, risk-free ROBS, or guaranteed tax result unless the exact narrower claim is supported and qualified
• internal workflows, private review queues, unpublished machinery, or fact-checking staff not visible in the current repository or public pages

Readers should treat the policy as an evidence standard and a verification map, not as assurance that a ROBS transaction, provider, business, franchise, loan, tax position, filing position, or plan operation is suitable or compliant for their facts.

These sources support this policy's factual boundaries. External sources establish ROBS, fiduciary, fee, and rollover standards. Internal sources establish only current visible site practices and trust destinations.