The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 changed the filing deadline “insiders” had to report trades in their publicly traded employer’s stock . What constitutes an "insider"?

You might try contacting the AICPA. They have been doing a great deal of work trying to interpret Sarbanes and possibly could offer some insight.

That is a person that has to file reports under Section 16 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934.

Generally speaking, auditors are not experts in securities laws. Also, that act severely limits their ability to do non-audit-related work, such as advising on securities laws matters.

In general, an insider is an officer, director or person who has a more than 10% beneficial interest in a company. Look at Section 16 of the Exchange Act of 1934 and the rules issued thereunder for more information. Consult with a Securities attorney for clarification; the rules are complex!

The most complex part of this is the officer definitions because it does not include all officers. Those AVP bank tellers would probably not be included. Generally, you are only talking about a handful of the top officers. And, often, officers of wholly-owned subsidiaries are not included in the group.

The main issue to realize is that the company should already know who this group is (the definition of the group has not changed under the new law) and the information on who is included should be coming from them. No plan administrator or recordkeeper should have anything to do with making this determination.