Submitted an ESOP restatement for Cycle A on January 30, 2007; received IRS acknowledgment letter dated February 7, 2007. No word until last week, until we got request for potential amendments dated April 21, 2009 (almost 2 years, 3 months to the date of original submission). Is anyone else experiencing this type of delay (and if so, can't imagine when Cycle E letters would be issued - 2014?).

At the Great Lakes Benefit Conference, the IRS reps acknowledged that the ESOPs are really lagging because they need a higher level reviewer. Our tax dollar kinda working.

Kind of ironic how much of a one way street this new determ process is. Employers are constantly under the gun to get interim amendments adopted yet the IRS feels no compulsion whatsoever to do its job in a timely manner.

Sure they have a compulsion to be timely--they try to be done within 5 years, before the next cycle ends!! It all depends on your/their definition of "timely" . . .

ESOP review is caught up in some controversy. Be glad you are not getting comments now because the IRS is taking some positions that are contrary to accepted understandings, including accepted understandings that are not wrong. There are a lot of accepted understadings about ESOPs that are wrong and I am hoping that the IRS steps on a few of those.