Leaderboard

Just as I said - nothing tying it to plan years. If they meant "first day of the first plan year", they would have said so. They didn't. And that quote is, in context, in a place where the focus is on what to do if the person had more than one plan entry date. ERISA (as amended) clearly calls for NRA being tied to the 5th anniversary of plan entry with no mention of the start of a plan year. Plans defining NRA as the later of age 65 or the 5th anniversary of plan entry (with no mention of the first day of a plan year) have been getting determination letters for over 30 years, and if that is what the plan says, administration must follow that.

I would be very careful with self certification even after memo. It doesn't make self certification compliant, but says you should treat it as if it was compliant if certain steps are taken. If you fail to take those steps, you are once again not complaint. I spoke to some ERISA attorneys and auditors at luncheon last week and none are recommending self certification.

1.411(a)-7: “For purposes of subdivision (ii)(B) of this subparagraph, participation commences on the first day of the first year in which the participant commenced his participation in the plan”

If the problem were from an EA exam, the candidates taking the exam are expected to be familiar with the general conditions (such as NRA being 65 unless specified otherwise). While there may be gross unfairness occurring here in the BenefitsLink discussion concerning what NRA may be (perhaps the OP should have mentioned what NRA is), there should be no unfairness at all for those taking the EA exam, who should not only have familiarized themselves with the plethora of general conditions but who would (I believe) have access to a copy of the general conditions handed out at the exam itself and available for reference during the exam.

The plan sponsor (separate from the TPA) needs an ERISA counsel.

if you were to 'self-correct', that would mean following the terms of the document, which means moving the $ from Roth to regular deferral, but that involves tax issues so would require VCP so the other option would be retro amend the plan to permit Roth, but you can't really self- correct something like that without IRS approval, so again going through VCP. I would suspect the IRS would permit that, especially if the deferral election form indicated either deferrals or Roth (as opposed to 'only the owner did this') at least that is my understanding.