When I was at the ASPPA Conference last October, I attended a session on Plan Documents. I wrote a note during the session that said if there is a feature in the plan that is not being used and probably will never be used, then don't put it into the plan on restatement. For example, a discretionary match that never happens.

I know the reason to do this made sense to me as I sat in the session, but I cannot for the life of me remember why it was important to remove unused features.

Can anyone out there tell me why it would matter?

Thank you.

Not off the top of my head can I think of a reason. If it was a new plan, I imagine the reason for not including the match is that you could add it at a later date and still get the 3% ACP look back becasue it would be a new feature.

Exactly. If they are not using it now, and their testing is prior year, then the prior year match is 0%. So when they decide in some year to actually contribute a match, passing ACP can become a problem, especially if they do not want to switch to current year testing for some reason.

Or if the year has ended already, and they say "Hey, let's make a discretionary match for last year, our document allows that." At that point it is too late to amend to use current year testing.

I have had plan sponsors that were concerned the discretionary match language in the SPD might mislead the participants into thinking they were going to get a match.